Why I love factcheck.org...

...although it does add to my overall skepticism about our political system... :-P

From factcheck.org:

Spin and hype were apparent, once again, at the third and final debate between McCain and Obama:

- McCain claimed the liberal group ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." In fact, a Republican prosecutor said of the biggest ACORN fraud case to date: "[T]his scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting." He said $8-an-hour workers turned in made-up voter registration forms rather than doing what ACORN paid them to do.

- McCain said "Joe the plumber" faced "much higher taxes" under Obama’s tax plan and would pay a fine under Obama's health care plan if he failed to provide coverage for his workers. But Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher would pay higher taxes only if the business he says he wants to buy puts his income over $200,000 a year, and his small business would be exempt from Obama’s requirement to provide coverage for workers.

(Update Oct. 16: ABC News reported the morning after the debate that Wurzelbacher admitted to a reporter that he won't actually make enough from his new plumbing business to pay Obama's higher tax rates. ABC said his admission "would seem to indicate that he would be eligible for an Obama tax cut.")

- Obama repeated a dubious claim that his health care plan will cut the average family’s premiums by $2,500 a year. Experts have found that figure to be overly optimistic.

- McCain claimed that Obama’s real "object" is a government-run, single-payer health insurance system like those in Canada or England. The McCain campaign points to a quote from five years ago, when Obama told a labor gathering that he was "a proponent of a single-payer health care program." But Obama has since qualified his enthusiasm for Canadian-style health care, and his current proposal is nothing like that.

- Obama incorrectly claimed all of McCain’s ads had been "negative." That was true for one recent week, but not over the entire campaign. And at times Obama has run a higher percentage of attack ads than McCain.

- McCain described Colombia as the "largest agricultural importer of our products." Actually, Canada imports the most U.S. farm products, and Colombia is far down the list.

- Obama strained to portray himself as willing to break ranks with fellow Democrats. His prime example was his vote for a bill that was supported by 18 Democrats and opposed by 26. Congressional Quarterly rates him as voting with his party 97 percent of the time since becoming a U.S. senator.

Whew...

I have taken the GRE and I feel fairly satisfied with the results... preparing for the test (which I took Monday) explains why I haven't posted much in the last week, in case anyone was wondering. Now it's on to the PhD applications, specifically developing my purpose statement. Woohoo!

God, power and love...

Power and Love. Love and Power. This dichotomy is the source of much of the confusion over, frustration with, and hatred of the Christian religion that exists today. Nearly every major struggle within Christianity has to do with, in some sense, the debate over which of these two divine attributes ought to retain primacy and why. Because, as most theologians seem to agree, the orthodox understanding of the Christian God must include both omnipotence (power) and omnibenevolence (love). Certainly there are some who re-define the terms, so as to escape the dilemma, and others simply reject the traditional perspective outright. But if we are attempting to remain as non-heretical as possible (if that's even possible!), we have to face this difficulty.

The problem of evil is a prime example. Do we say God is Love, and downplay God's power by arguing that true Love would never allow the horrific evils we see around us (i.e. God must not be powerful enough to stop all evil)? Or do we argue for God's Power/Sovereignty, and suggest that God's Love is beyond our understanding, and that God allows evil to happen for an ultimately good reason? This, of course, implies that God's definition of "Love" is extremely different from ours. It requires drastically re-thinking our definition of Love and, if taken too far, leads to an untrustworthy, capricious deity.

Traditionally, the gift of human free will, which is seen as a good thing, has offered a possible path out of the "slough of despond" that comes from asking these questions. But this raises a host of other questions that often seem to do nothing more than push the argument back to a non-human level (i.e. Did the devil have free will? If so, why did the devil reject God?). In the end, our human minds simply cannot grasp the true character of the God in whom we are asked to place our faith. So, there is always a lingering question: How do we hold together both God's omnipotence and Gods' omnibenevolence? Is there a way to understand this, or do we have no other option besides simple fideism at this point?

I am not proposing a solution; I am merely asking the question -- Which way do you lean? Do you tend to emphasize God's Love, or God's Power? Why?

holding heaven and earth together...

I am a part of a "small group" at the church I attend, Bethany Community Church. We meet every Wed. night for dinner, discussion, and prayer. Lately we've been discussing the pastor's sermon series on The Apostle's Creed. Last night we talked about the section of the creed that presents God as "maker of heaven and earth."

One of the questions we considered had to do with our own approach to God, and whether we relate more to the "spiritual" side of things (considering God's attributes, prayer, listening for the Spirit, contemplation, etc) or the more "earthy" side (seeing God's handiwork in nature, interaction with other people, acts of service, etc). This led to a consideration of the challenge we have as Christians in holding both "heaven" and "earth" together in our faith.

Traditionally, much of Christianity has focused on the spiritual at the expense of the material. The common belief among many Christians is that the natural world is somehow a bad thing, and what Christians need to do is focus on rescuing souls from this sinful world and preparing them for heaven. But, recently (as has happened from time to time), many Christians have recaptured the understanding of creation as good. All that God created is good, and therefore has value, even though it has been corrupted by sin.

Instead of viewing the natural world, and our earthly bodies, as something that doesn't matter, a proper understanding of God's creative and redemptive work takes into account that just as God created everything good, God is also in the process of redeeming everything and making it good again - in fact, making it even better than before! (For a good description of what this restoration might look like, check out N.T. Wright's recent book, Surprised by Hope.)

So, what does this mean for us, as individual Christians, living in Seattle (at least our small group is ;-D) in 2008? There were two themes that stood out to me from our conversation:

1. Holding "heaven" and "earth" together means taking seriously both our responsibility to God and our responsibility to creation (including other people). It is not enough for us to be concerned with "evangelizing the lost"; our lives as followers of Christ should reflect the overall mission of Christ - to be involved in the transformation of all things, through God's power and love.

We do not "accept Jesus" and then relegate him to the "spiritual" section of our lives; Jesus captures us, and transforms us into his likeness, and we become agents of that transformation to the rest of creation. This means re-thinking our responsibility not only to other people, but to the earth as well, because as human beings we are inextricably connected to the natural order.

2. As Christians, although we do have a responsibility to live as agents of transformation, we do not live that way out of guilt or a need to perform, but out of gratitude. Instead of looking at the world as something that "needs fixing", we rejoice because we believe that God is always already in the process of fixing the world, and we get to be a part of that process!

This brings me to a quick point about the nature of stewardship. Often, the word "dominion" (used in Genesis and elsewhere in Scripture) is taken as an opportunity to manipulate creation for our own advantages. But the Hebrew word actually means something more akin to "responsible care for" the creation. If we are to care responsibly for creation, how does this change the way we treat people, animals, land, resources, etc? I don't think it's difficult to see that, in many ways, Christians have not been responsible care-givers to creation. This is something that we must change.

Of course, we will never succeed on our own, without God's involvement. But we do believe God is involved! And we don't need to beat ourselves up when we fail. But we do need to examine our motives, and see where we have neglected our responsibilities as agents of transformation, and then step out in faith, and begin to live in joyful hope as people who believe that God is making all things new.

Calvin and Hobbes... and theology... :-)

Lately, Dr. Richard Beck has been posting a series of enlightening and hilarious entries on "The Theology of Calvin and Hobbes." Here is the latest entry. Great stuff!

Evans on Kierkegaard and logical contradiction...

"One important property of the absolute paradox for Kierkegaard is that it must be unique; the incarnation must somehow qualify as the absurd. However, there is nothing unique about a logical contradiction and no principled way to say that one is 'more contradictory' or 'absurd' than any other.

Furthermore, it is hard to see how a logical contradiction could serve as the 'boundary' or 'limit' of reason as the incarnation is supposed to do. To recognize a 'square circle' as a formal contradiction one must have a fairly clear grasp of the concepts of 'square' and 'circle'. In one sense at least, therefore, such a concept falls within the competence of reason; if it did not, reason could not properly classify it as a logical contradiction. The point of the incarnation, according to Kierkegaard, is that it is a concept that reason cannot understand.

Human reason is baffled both by human nature and by God. It is further baffled by the conjunction of the two concepts, but not because reason has a clear understanding of either what it means to be human or what it means to be God. The incarnation may appear or seem to human reason to be a logical contradiction, but it is not known to be such, and the believer does not think it is a formal contradiction."

C. Stephen Evans - Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account

human being and transcending...

"Our way of being in the world is best understood in terms of possible ways of being. We may share much in common with others, and we would not be who we are independently of our histories. Yet in some sense we seem also able to transcend or go beyond these boundaries. We are both fact and possibility Heidegger would say. Our being is something to be achieved; it is something to be gained or lost. In this sense we appear to be different from other beings in the universe. As beings of potentiality, beings on the way, we are always transcending boundaries, moving into new possibilities of being. We are temporal beings. We exist in the present involved in the heritage of what has been. But we also exist in the future which is coming towards us. Our being is such that in the present we remember the past and anticipate the future. We are becoming as individuals and as entangled in the history of humankind."

Eugene Long