Rev-Ed has recovered from election day activities and posted the Christian Carnival CXLVII. Hopefully my schedule this week will allow me to link back to a few of these posts.
Thanks to Rev-Ed for a nice carnival.
Author: henry
-
Voter Turnout Higher – Wow
MSNBC reports that voter turnout is slightly higher than the last midterms and was just a tad over 40%.
I have to say that I’m less than overwhelmed. Where are the other 60% of registered voters, not to mention all the ones who don’t bother to register. You can’t tell me that there was nothing to vote on this time. At least here in Florida there were a number of significant issues, and I know there were in several other states.
I believe it is appropriate that those who want to rule do so, but I can’t imagine what the rest of the voters are thinking, if anything.
-
Ted Who?
John at Locusts and Honey links to an interesting post on Evangelical Outpost that refers to the scandal with Ted Haggard in a dismissive way. Now I would agree that any claim that the Haggard scandal would keep evangelicals home is almost by definition exaggerated.
On the other hand, I think such a scandal does tend to erode support for the moral position involved. Ted Haggard campaigned against gay marriage and then is caught in behavior he has condemned. That’s hypocrisy, and it’s bound to erode some support on his issues. But the political tendency is to spin things before the election. And I want to make it clear that from my persepctive, the hypocrisy is the major sin here.
I’ve got to say that I’ve found it pretty funny to watch evangelicals pretend Haggard is a minor character. I’m not even an evangelical, and I know him pretty well.
-
Divided Government Again
Well, I wanted it to happen, and it did. We have divided government. The good news is that the Republicans lost some ground, the bad news is that the Democrats won. Of course, the second had to happen if the first did.
What annoys me as an independent voter is hearing Democratic strategists claiming that independent voters “turned to them” and talking about the kind of mandate they get from that. There is only one real mandate–that is that you got elected.
-
Baseball Rules and Bible Study
Over the last few years I’ve tried to learn a great deal about baseball, because I have a stepson who is a professional pitcher. It has taken me some time to learn, because I didn’t grow up with baseball, and there are quite a number of subtleties. When I first started watching, for example, I thought that the one big thing about pitching was strikeouts, and I assumed that all pitches would be aimed for the strike zone. Over time I’ve learned about many other options. The rules seem simple, but they give rise to a huge number of options.
A while back I found a quiz on difficult calls an umpire might face. I recall being quite pleased with myself as a relative nephyte, to be able to get 50% of those calls right. You see there are the basic rules, then there are more detailed rules, and then you have to deal with all of the various options that players have while playing within the rules. The rules tell me that if a ball passes over any part of the plate at the appropriate height range, it’s a strike. It’s also a strike if the batter swings and misses, or for the first two strikes if it’s a foul ball. That doesn’t tell the pitcher what kind of a pitch to throw on a full count, however. For that one needs to know one’s own abilities, the batter, the abilities of the catcher, and the current state of the game.
What does all of this have to do with the Bible?
-
Just What the Bible Says
More than a year ago I wrote a post titled Just Your Interpretation. In it I challenge the idea that just any interpretation will do, and suggested that there are right and wrong interpretations, and we should aim for right interpretations. I know this goes contrary to the post-modern trend.
But I also mentioned another side to the issue. There are those who regularly claim that they are not presenting an interpretation, but rather are presenting “just what the Bible says.” They despise and reject any appeal to resources other than the scriptures, and urge all correspondents to support everything with specific texts.
-
Go Vote!
News stories are now talking about the drive on both sides to get out the vote today. It amazes me that it takes this much effort to get people to go make some choices about their government. But I know from the times I’ve worked in political campaigns that the results often come down to who managed to do a better job getting their supporters out on election day.
My wife and I will not make it to the polls until evening, when we may have to stand in line. In fact, I hope we will have to stand in line. That would mean that our precinct has good turnout. I’ll pass by the pollling place several times today, but we like to do this together. We always go over the sample ballot and discuss our votes and the reasons for them in the days before the election, and then we go together. We don’t always vote the same way. Sometimes people, especially couples, find it hard to discuss politics when they disagree strongly on candidates, but while we sometimes disagree passionately, we have never found it so. We just mark one ballot with different colors and we can tell where we’re going to cancel out.
Some folks out there are telling themselves that their vote doesn’t count and it isn’t important. But just because you can’t cast the deciding vote doesn’t mean what you do isn’t important. In sports we give special mention to the player who drove in the winning run, or scored the winning touchdown. But it’s not like that in politics. Not only do we not know who cast the vote that gave a candidate a lead, even the percentages will become part of the political debate over the next few years.
If you think this election is less important because it’s not a presidential year, think again. It may be that you think your vote isn’t important because you only worry about the presidential election in which you’re one of many millions. But I’m sure you have local races. Local races are important.
This is a team activity in which everyone can participate. Get off the bench!
-
What if We’re to Blame?
Robert J. Samuelson has an excellent article in Newsweek with this title. He comments on the way politicians follow the polls, and how we, as voters, demand contradictory things:
Americans favor balanced budgets. But in 66 years of surveys, taxpayers have never said their income taxes were too low, reports Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute. A Gallup poll in April found that 48 percent thought their taxes too high and only 2 percent too low. Americans also think government spending is hugely wasteful; 61 percent said so in a 2004 poll by the University of Michigan. But locating that waste is hard. A recent Fox News poll found that only 19 percent favor cuts in Social Security, 21 percent in health care, 19 percent in education and 25 percent for the military.
Read the whole article. It’s worth it!
-
Wisdom, Discernment, and Creation
My Breaking Christian News E-Mail tipped me off to this article on http://www.worldnetdaily.com”>WorldNetDaily titled End creation-evolution debate in your home. This sort of thing amazes me and makes me very, very concerned. The article advertises a new printing of the book Bishop James Ussher, The Annals of the World.
Now I certainly do not mind seeing an old book reprinted, but even the title of the article makes ridiculous claims for this book. It will certainly not settle anything about creation-evolution debates. One should be warned by someone giving a month and day for the creation of the world based on texts that are at best written in years and with considerable doubts about those.
But the article also calls this book “. . . a favorite of homeschoolers and those who take ancient history seriously.” That is simply incredible. Practically the entire field of ancient near eastern archeology has been created since that book was written. It is, itself, a historical artifact, and not a good source for the facts of the history of the world or of their interpretation. If homeschoolers are being taught history in this fashion, we have a great deal to be worried about.
This is not wisdom and disernment. This is gullibility. I was homeschooled myself. Understand that I’m not criticizing homeschooling as such, though I do believe that many people try to homeschool who have neither the skills nor the discipline for it. But I am criticizing the use of materials that are not appropriate to the task for which they are used.
-
Hidden Hate – Open Rebuke
Yesterday I had planned to write a response to the Ted Haggard situation, but other issues got in the way, and then the story developed. I was going to talk some about the meaning of forgiveness combined with accountability and openness. I would have said that we didn’t know yet precisely what had happened, but that he had done the right thing by stepping aside and letting an independent oversight board take a look.
All of those things are true still. We don’t know precisely what happened, but we do see a bit more fire and less smoke. I would still say that forgiveness involves putting aside our resentments so that we do not poison ourselves with anger, but at the same time that forgiveness doesn’t remove consequences of someone’s bad choices. Accountability is still a key, and simply the fact that there are structures in place that look like accountability doesn’t mean that a person is really being held accountable.