:Reasonable Force

The horrifying murders of thirty-three students and faculty at Virginia Tech have been followed by the chilling media blitz that has put the killer’s name and face, complete with action poses, on every newspaper and television network in America. He has achieved the kind of notoriety and attention that others are going to desire to have, and I would be very surprised if his approach isn’t emulated by some in the near future.

He aided in the coverage of his own story by providing promotional materials, essentially a press packet, to NBC, who are now obligingly making him a star. This is sickeningly reminiscent of the Robert DeNiro movie “15 Minutes,” in which the killers videotape their crimes with the hope of selling it to the media.

If you watch pro football you may have been watching a game during which a fan, most likely a drunk one, jumps from the stands onto the field and runs around, until they are either corralled by security or get knocked into next week by a player (my preference). You may be aware that this has occurred, but I dare say you’ve never actually seen it. This is because the NFL seems to have an agreement with the networks that they will not reward such attention-seekers with airtime. While such an event is taking place, the cameras will be everywhere BUT on the perpetrator. As much as we would sometimes like to see what’s happening, I think this is a wise policy.

Most of the country probably want answers about the shootings, including information about the killer. I’m sure it’s tough to know precisely where to draw the line between providing the public with relevant information and sensationalizing the lived-out fantasies of would-be killers and glory-seekers everywhere.

I think it’s pretty clear in this instance that wherever that line is, it was not only crossed, it was leaped over and left way behind.

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Diabetics cured by stem-cell treatment, trumpets the headline.

This article, in the U.K.’s Times Online, only requires a marginally attentive reader to get to the second paragraph to note the type of cells used in this treatment.

Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again.

In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood. [emphasis, of course, mine.]

Nevertheless, the Times later makes a claim supported nowhere in this article, but commonly touted, that the real promise lies in embryonic stem cell research if only it weren’t being stymied.

Previous studies have suggested that stem-cell therapies offer huge potential to treat a variety of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease. A study by British scientists in November also reported that stem-cell injections could repair organ damage in heart attack victims.

But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.

As has been noted before, all President Bush has done is prevent federal funding of embryonic stem cell research beyond the embryonic stem cell lines that had already been created. There is no ban on such research, though I certainly wouldn’t oppose it.

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I received this from Rebecca:

Please comment on the revival going on among the Messianic Jews who are being filled with the Holy Spirit and baptized in the name of Jesus according to Acts 2:38, as well as Matthew 28:19; being the NAME of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (which are titles) is Jesus. There is no other name given among men whereby we MUST be saved.

Thank you for your comments.

Well, Rebecca, to the extent that such a revival is taking place, I would praise God for His faithfulness and mercy. I haven’t fully hammered out my eschatology yet, but I am pretty firmly in the camp of those who believe that Israel is still a distinct people to whom God will fulfill His promises (and is fulfilling to some extent today). Romans 11 speaks unquestionably that the olive branches that were broken off that we might be grafted in will be themselves grafted back into the very tree from which they were cut.

I further believe that literal Jerusalem will be the seat of a literal, Earthly kingdom with Christ as its head for a literal thousand years. Even though the present political state of Israel is a secular nation, I view her as David viewed Saul (not a direct parallel, but hopefully you take my meaning). Though presently in disobedience, God’s warning to bless rather than curse His people is still to be heeded. Israel is the anointed of God. I am saved today because God saw fit to harden her heart that Christ’s Gospel might be taken to the Gentiles.

Therefore it is a tremendous cause for joy when one of Abraham’s physical children becomes his spiritual child as well.

I hope I’ve addressed your topic satisfactorily. God bless.

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NGC 1672, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is seen almost face on and shows regions of intense star formation. The greatest concentrations of star formation are found in the so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy’s strong galactic bar. NGC 1672 is a prototypical barred spiral galaxy and differs from normal spiral galaxies in that the spiral arms do not twist all the way into the centre. Instead, they are attached to the two ends of a straight bar of stars enclosing the nucleus.

I love this stuff.

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OpinionJournal featured an editorial by Tawfik Hamid, former member of an Islamic terrorist group, in which he made this admission:

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the “end of days.” The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.

In the same day, I heard this story of a school district in New Jersey holding an exercise to test their readiness in the event of a Columbine-style shooting and hostage incident. With the cooperation of local police, they staged their scenario, in which two armed men stormed the school, shooting several students and holding ten others hostage. Striving for realism, they crafted a backstory for the incident.

It seems that the gunmen were “right-wing fundamentalists who don’t believe in separation of church and state.”

The fictional trigger for their rampage? The daughter of one of the men had been expelled from school for praying before class.

I’m not suggesting their scenario should have included Islamic terrorists. It was unnecessary in my view to ascribe a particular motive to the attackers at all. I mention the article about the violence implicit in mainstream Islamic theology because I find it ironic that all of the Western world has an avowed enemy that daily carries out terrorist acts against civilian targets and yet these school officials are apparently more afraid of “fundamentalist” Christianity.

Or perhaps they simply lump as all together as do Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, and A. C. Grayling, who in a recent London debate defended the position “We’d be better off without religion.”

The absolute certainty, the unreflective credence given to ancient texts that relate to historically remote conditions, the zealotry and bigotry that flow from their certainty, are profoundly dangerous: at their extreme they result in mass murder, but long before then they issue in censorship, coercion to conform, the control of women, the closing of hearts and minds.

Thus there is a continuum from the suicide bomber driven by religious zeal to the moral crusader who wishes to stop everyone else from seeing or reading what he himself finds offensive. This fact makes people of a secular disposition no longer prepared to be silent and concessive.

Religion has lost respectability as a result of the atrocities committed in its name, because of its clamouring for an undue slice of the pie, and for its efforts to impose its views on others.

If you spend just a little time reading the comments on nearly any post on Dawkins’ site you will see that a common thread of the community there is the belief that religion is the source of all the world’s ills, or at least its violence and hatred.

When I think on these things I find myself driven to spend time in God’s word. I reaffirm to myself who He is and reacquaint myself with His matchless power. I’m also gripped with a sense of urgency for the practice of the spiritual disciplines that are our part of the sanctification process. Because I believe that there are dark times ahead for people who are willing to profess a belief in Jesus’ literal resurrection and everything that means. And Scripture gives us some comfort if we suffer for the sake of the name of Christ, but we must guard our behavior so as not to deserve the world’s condemnation. As Peter said, “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.” (1 Peter 4:15-16)

We must be ever mindful not to repay evil with evil, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for our enemies (Rom. 12:17, Luke 6:28, Matt. 5:44).

Daily, it seems, we have occasion to recall the words of Christ:

18“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. —John 15:18-19

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Perhaps you’ve seen this headline:
British team grows human heart valve from stem cells

There’s nothing untrue in the headline. I wouldn’t even call it misleading, exactly, outside of the context of the cultural struggle over the use of embryonic stem cells, which are culled from destroyed human embryos. Apart from specifically pro-life articles, however, it is extremely rare to see any qualification in headlines such as this, or even in the articles themselves, of what type of stem cells have been used for the latest touted breakthrough. The lack of that information may have the effect of eroding public resistance to the use of embryonic stem cells, federal funding of which is currently banned thanks to President Bush.

Here is the first paragraph in the cited article:

A British research team led by the world’s leading heart surgeon has grown part of a human heart from stem cells for the first time. If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from heart disease within three years.

Here, far deeper in the article, is the relevant distinction:

By using chemical and physical nudges, the scientists first coaxed stem cells extracted from bone marrow to grow into heart valve cells. By placing these cells into scaffolds made of collagen, Dr Chester and his colleague Patricia Taylor then grew small 3cm-wide discs of heart valve tissue. Later this year, that tissue will be implanted into animals – probably sheep or pigs – and monitored to see how well it works as part of a circulatory system. [emphasis mine]

Much as the abortionists years ago built public support for their case through lies and gross exaggerations of back-alley abortion statistics, ESC researchers offer blue-sky predictions of the medical miracles that will surely be ours if we only shake off our stubborn discomfort with the idea of sacrificing human embryos to be their source of raw materials. Whether ignorant or complicit, the media often helps their cause by failing to emphasize the distinction between the kinds of stem cells being discussed.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that the use of embryonic stem cells will become justified should their medical promise ever become a certainty. It is patently immoral to destroy a human life for medical research even if every human disease could thereby be eradicated. The issue here is purely one of public perception; a battle for hearts and minds, if you will. While we ideally would persuade people of the underlying moral issue, that argument is undermined when people become tempted by promises of longer, healthier lives. At the very least, in our conversations, let us not allow ESC to receive credit for the truly promising work that is being done with other types of stem cells.

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