:Reasonable Force

No, I’m not making apocalyptic pronouncements, though news items like this make it tempting. It is difficult to imagine sitting at the beach on a beautiful day with clear, blue skies and having a thirty-foot wave come seemingly out of nowhere.

“Death came from the sea,” Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, India, told Reuters. “The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?“

A valid question, commonly invoked in times of devastation, or even, if we are honest, far less calamitous circumstances. Man, what did I do to deserve hitting the fourth red light in a row!

Do events such as this one preclude the existence of the merciful, loving Father that Christian theology expounds? Many claim precisely that. I say that in order to make that claim we have to be in the position of God Himself; to be possessed of an omniscient perspective and with perfect wisdom in order to see all ends of all means.

For my part, He is my judge; I am most certainly not qualified to be His.

The purpose of this post, however, is not to explain the problem of pain to the reader’s satisfaction, nor to proclaim the imminent return of our Lord (though verily, His return is imminent!), but to lay out a few goals for this blog in 2005:

• Orientation – As I’ve mentioned before, I want to steer clear of the campaign-style blogging that I was doing prior to Bush’s reelection. I won’t rule out declaring for a candidate again in the future, but I won’t if I believe that the site has achieved any sort of evangelical impact that might thereby be harmed.
• Regularity – One post a day, Monday through Saturday. Not mere links to the posts of others, mind you, but content actually generated, or at least mulled, by my own brain.
• Discipline – Post early each morning, prior to the beginning of my workday.
• Reflection – Avoid as much as possible hotheaded posts in response to the latest Drudge headline.
• Structure – Overhaul my categories and links to better suit my vision for the site.

I think that will do for starters. For me, these are ambitious goals indeed! I covet the prayers of any who are so inclined that God will work in me to overcome my procrastinating, non-directed, short-attention-span-having nature and miraculously use this site for His glory.

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Noting the recent cover stories on Jesus’ birth in Time and Newsweek magazines, Pastor Mark Roberts addresses the content of the articles themselves as well as the broader question of the historicity of the Nativity.

Pastor Roberts cites his reason for addressing these articles as follows:

My main concern about articles such as these is that they certainly appear to undermine classic Christian belief, even though they acknowledge the pervasiveness of this belief and don’t directly condemn it. Nowhere do they actually say: “Though many Christians believe the Christmas stories are true, in fact they’ve been duped, both about the stories and about Christian faith.” But, although many believers who read these cover stories will chalk them up as “same ol’, same ol’,” others may be worried. Perhaps, some Christians may wonder, what we believe about Christmas really was made up by the early church. Perhaps the Christmas story is really nothing more than a collection of pious and propagandistic legends.

Furthermore, stories like we find in Time and Newsweek stoke the fires of unbelief. When read by a non-Christian person, they may confirm the suspicion that Christian orthodoxy has no grounding in actual historical events. Thus the story of Jesus is not the story of God’s entry into human experience, but simply one story among many religious and philosophical options. After all, if the baby Jesus was really God in the flesh, then all people ought to take him seriously whether they’d like to or not. But if the account of his miraculous birth was fabricated by early Christians to compete with Roman emperor worship, then non-Christian folk can feel free to continue to ignore Jesus.

He then goes on to highlight certain logical fallacies in the articles and to lay the groundwork for showing why Christians don’t need to fear running afoul of historical fact in order to believe the literal account of Christ’s birth according to the Gospel narratives.

Note that this series is not yet complete. As of this posting it contains seven parts with, I believe, one more, concluding post to follow. Be sure to check back for the conclusion using the link above.

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What is it in the minds of U.S. Congresspersons that hears about a high-profile steroid scandal in a professional (read private) sports league and thinks, “that’s definitely something that the federal government needs to get involved with.”

Appearing on other Sunday talk shows, the House minority leader and the Senate majority leader agreed that the best solution would be for baseball to require stronger testing but said they would support legislation if the league failed to act on its own.

“They have a responsibility, not only to the sport, but to the children of America who look up to these players,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”"Quite frankly, it’s overdue.”

Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the problem “could be ended, bang, just like that, if everybody from the owners to the unions just step up and face the reality that we’ve got a huge problem.”

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Frist said, “I’ll support being very aggressive if it cannot be addressed at the more local level, which again, I would much prefer.”

So what if they say that they prefer MLB clean up its own house? The key question here is what business does government have involving itself at all?

I fully realize that our representatives exceeded their Constitutional mandate a loooong time ago and that this is probably not even the best example to get outraged about. This item just caught my eye and immediately struck me with its absurdity.

It’s really this simple: if league rules have been violated, let the league handle it. If laws have been broken, let prosecutors prosecute.

Ultimately it is the fans that will determine whether the game is sullied by whether or not they choose to spend their money on it or feed MLB’s ratings with their viewership.

Don’t waste time with any arguments about the harmful impact of star athletes’ steroid use on youthful aspirants. Nobody can argue with a straight face that government should stick their legislative noses in for that reason when alcohol advertisements are responsible for a huge percentage of the television revenue.

Not that it would make sense even if the above weren’t true, but the hypocrisy of getting riled up about influencing youngsters to use steroids is laughable.

John McCain claims that there’s ‘not a doubt in his mind’ that the President would ‘love’ to sign a bill governing baseball’s handling of this into law. I will be extremely disappointed in my conservative President if he’s right.

(hat tip: Drudge)

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It seems the end of the election has taken a lot of wind out of my sails. I have started to comment on several things over the last few weeks but haven’t managed to muster the drive to carry anything to conclusion. Primarily, I think I am weary of responding in knee-jerk fashion to the news and, at the same time, I’m having difficulty finding time for more thoughtful, contemplative exercises.

The latter is what I have wanted this site to really be about from the beginning, but election-year concerns caught me up with a sense of urgency.

Hopefully, the holiday season will afford some time for reading that will help fire up the gray matter and generate some worthwhile content. In the meantime, I’ll continue to try to add some useful and interesting links.

Thanks for reading

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