The Plucked Chicken

This video is new to me, and is worth some careful thought. Certainly, there's a lot of political posturing here, but between the lines, we can get some idea of the spiritual convictions of Barack Obama, and how they relate to his ideas of public service. I think they also relate to his idea of legitimate "religion."

If you had your eyes wide open, you may have noticed a little news blurb about a horrible, multiple killing in the United States. I don't mean the murderous stand-off in Pittsburgh, in which a man entrapped police officers and shot them in the head. I don't mean the murderous killing of immigrants in Binghamton, New York, either, in which most of the victims had multiple gunshot wounds, and the attacker began by blocking the rear exit with his car.

Those are deeply tragic attacks. I sympathize with the families of the slain. Nobody should have to endure such a thing. Unfortunately, these occurences, like the shooting murders last summer on a college campus, have always happened, despite the efforts of many to prevent them. In fact, that's what the Pittsburgh officers were doing when they perished: maintaining peace and order.

Also unfortunately, these things are routinely politicized, along with everything else. According to Google News, the Philadelphia Inquirer posted an article about those murders 10 hours ago, and 8 hours ago, the Mayor published his desire for a ban on "assault-type weapons." Blogs are already trying to smear everyone who defends gun rights as a dangerous "gun nut." I don't really have the time to read that kind of thing, much less write it.

The blurb I began writing about concerns a multiple killing that happened in Boston. Massachusetts, for those who don't know, is about the least gun-friendly state there is. It's a long-running experiment in the effectiveness of its position on firearms. But this killing apparently didn't involve firearms, unless you count the ones used by the police. The murder weapon was a sharp piece of metal, a "kitchen knife." (Many knives are also illegal in Massachusetts. Don't tell anyone that I carried a pocket knife through High School there. Nobody knew because I didn't hurt or threaten anyone with it. I did feel safer, though.)

You may want to skip the AP news blurb I quote below, as it's a bit gruesome. I'm quoting it instead of linking, because I suspect that things like this won't last as long in the news as gun-related violence. The press has an agenda, too, after all. That's probably why this was harder to find than articles on the other killings.

BOSTON (AP) — Two Massachusetts girls and the brother who stabbed them to death are being mourned at a single funeral service.

Family and friends gathered Saturday morning at the Jubilee Christian Church in Boston's Mattapan neighborhood for a funeral for the siblings.

A week ago, 17-year-old Samantha Revelus and her 5-year-old sister, Bianca, were killed at their home in Milton. Police burst into the apartment and saw the girls' brother, 23-year-old Kerby Revelus, decapitating Bianca with a kitchen knife.

Police say they shot Kerby Revelus dead as he tried to attack another sister.

A spokesman for the children's parents said they are "in shock and disbelief" and have no explanation why their son would kill his sisters.

This is also a terrible tragedy.
I hope the surviving family members receive the comfort of the Gospel.

These three recent multiple-murder news stories, especially the one quoted above, illustrate things worth mentioning. For one, the murder weapons don't make much difference. My house is full of potential murder weapons, but it's no more dangerous than yours. Within sight right now are some large, heavy, blunt objects. I'm typing on a keyboard, a genuine IBM Model M. (Ever see Gattaca?) Electricity flows through the wires that power my light bulbs. The window to my right is filled with glass that can break into knife-sharp pieces. Behind me are a couple chairs and a telescope with tripod. My multimeter has long, strong, metal wires. There's more in this room, but consider the kitchen, where we keep our Cutco knives, among other things. (Did you notice the article from Florida about the homeless man killed with a 7-inch Cutco knife? We've got one.) I distinctly remember Louis L'Amour characters saying that hot coffee can make a good weapon. Probably a defensive weapon, but still a weapon. What about the garage, where my workshop is? What about the tool shed outside?

I mention all of this not to demonstrate my own morbidity, nor to make you suspect I'm a sociopath myself. Actually, it's taken some slight creativity for me to think of that list, though there's some help in the Jason Bourne movies. I mention this to demonstrate that the particular weapon used in murder makes little to no difference. When someone is actually killed by an inanimate object, it's almost always an accident of some kind, not a murder.

People murder people. This is what Jesus said about it, to those who sought to murder Him. "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him" (John 8:44).

The reason our society (news media, politicians, etc.) tries to curtail murder by banning weapons is because it refuses to admit that murder is done by sinful people, not by the weapons they happen to use. Weapons must be used by someone. There is a good, God-pleasing use, and there is an evil use. That's true of just about everything, and just about anything can be used as a weapon.

You can see the lunacy of targetting weapons instead of the evil in people by imagining a ban on Cutco. Let "knife" become synonymous with "assault weapon," and create a ban so that nobody but law enforcement personnel could have one any more. That ought to put a strangle-hold on the murder rate, right? Well, maybe not. Meanwhile, avid home cooks and law-abiding restaurants everywhere would be scrambling to find government-approved methods of cutting food without knives. The Boy Scouts would lose half its membership, and law-abiding outdoorsmen would spend most of their time chipping flakes from obsidian.

The target should be the evil in people. All people. Any of us is perfectly capable of doing evil things. Instead of handcuffing everyone, God has provided Law: moral laws that should constrain those who care about God's judgment, and civil laws that can be enforced by the God-given power of civil government. They don't eliminate the evil, but the laws we have are to limit its effects, especially in their enforcement.

Unfortunately, evildoers are enabled by a society that refuses to acknowledge the source of the evil. It's the rebellion against God within every one of us. But our society has tried to give everything a naturalistic explanation, including the origin of human beings, and our morality. Children in schools are taught that they are an accidental product of random chance, rather than prized moral creatures created by God and redeemed from guilt by the sacrifice of His Son. If anyone believes those schools, it's no wonder that they are willing to do evil. It's no wonder that the limiting effect of morality has been diminished in our time. It's no wonder that people like the young man in Boston can do what they do. Did you notice the statement from his parents? They have "no explanation why their son would kill his sisters." One good explanation is no further than the nearest public-school biology textbook.

It's not the guns. It's the worldview, the naturalistic religion (or anti-religion) spoon-fed through public education, media, and even American culture. If you want to point to a single influence in this world most responsible for murders and sorrows like this, point to the evil in your own heart. If you want to point to something outside yourself, point to the worldview.

The Christian, biblical worldview says that human life is sacred. God made it that way. He alone has the power to begin it, and He alone has the authority to end it. Sometimes He uses that authority through government, as when the knife-wielding killer was shot in Boston, or when our soldiers carry out rightful orders that result in the death of an enemy -- or even "collateral" deaths, if they are reasonably minimized. But as individuals, neither the police officer, nor the soldier, nor any citizen has the authority to take the life of another.

The only exception is self-defense, including the defense of your family. That exception has a long history as part of our law. Still, the life of an assailant is also sacred, and we should not kill unless it's absolutely necessary.

Christians are constrained by morality, recognizing that it reflects God's will, and that everyone will face His judgment in the end. That's part of the biblical worldview, which has been a great boon to American society and culture. Increasingly, though, there are many who reject the idea of accountability to God. In fact, I think that many of the attacks on social conservatives come from exactly that difference. People who have thrown off the moral constraints of accountability to God think that people like them should not be criticized for transgressing the moral constraints of others. Hence, the press often allows liberal politicians to get away with murder (figuratively speaking, most of the time), while the same wrongdoings committed by their conservative counterparts are roundly criticized. The difference is that the conservatives (supposedly) have the moral constraints that make the criticism possible.

Instead of holding human life to be sacred, the naturalistic worldview holds the earth, or the "environment" (whatever that means) to be sacred. In that view, harm done to another human is not so bad anymore. You would do far worse by harming an animal belonging to a legally-protected species. I suppose that's the reason why here in the Northwest, hydropower is not considered a legitimate, renewable source of energy. You see, some people accuse dams of damaging the environment. Meanwhile, they not only provide reliable electricity, but do this so abundantly that expensive, maniacal regulations meant to help fish are actually followed, but the increased cost of power is still quite affordable, and competitive with power from sources that do not supposedly "harm the environment."

When a worldview becomes so skewed that a person's conscience is more sensitive to harm he might be doing to animals than it is to harm he plans doing to humans, that worldview is evil.

For such evil in us all, Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, to suffer and die. He bore all the guilt this world accumulates before God, and He received the full punishment, all alone. Because He did this, we are forgiven. We are free, and can boldly live before Him in righteousness, as best we may. With His forgiveness, we are free of guilt to do our best in this world, knowing that our true, eternal home, is prepared and waiting for us. That's the true solution to the evil within us. That's what Jesus accomplished.

There's one part of the Declaration of Independence that I'm not sure I fully agree with. "... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...." I think I agree with it, but like the PMW, it requires further explaining.

I like the wording "Governments are instituted among Men," because it implies that the institution is not done by the Men. The only other possibility is that God institutes governments, which is in accord with "Render unto Caesar," Romans 13, Peter's epistles, and the Augsburg Confession.

I wonder whether it's accurate to say that governments "derive" their just powers from the "consent" of the governed.

Shedding some light on that is Hermann Sasse, who experienced some extreme examples of governing authority first-hand. In particular, Sasse experienced the tyranny of socialism in its national flavor under the Third Reich. His ecumenical endeavors also brought him into contact with the citizens of many other governments.

This is from the compilation of his writings called The Lonely Way (volume 1), p. 98 and 99. He writes here on "The Social Doctrine of the Augsburg Confession."

As God does his "alien work" in the midst of war, so may he also allow the outbreak of human sin in revolution in order to fulfill his angry judgment. Anarchy follows revolution. From anarchy a new power arises, and the question is whether such new power can be a legally constituted governing authority.

We must answer this question in the affirmative. For as far back in history as we are able to see, every governing authority once arose from anarchy. Legitima ordinatio is not only that governing authority which can trace its legitimacy back through an ancient past by letters of investiture and deeds, rather every political power may become the "governing authority." How can this happen? Doubtless not by the acknowledgement of men through a national assembly or a vote of the people. The assertion "the power of the state arises from the people." is false according to Lutheran doctrine, if it would be more than a formal description of the proceedings in a modern state by which a government is formed. The power of the state proceeds from God. One last reminder of this lives on in the religious formulas and forms with which modern peoples still surround the state and civil life. Any political power which has arisen out of anarchy may become a God-given governing authority, if it fulfills the tasks of the office of governing authority. This task is the assurance of peace and the maintenance of law through external power, the symbol of which is the sword. The governing authority is a "servant of God, the avenger for those who do evil." Legal governing authority is distinguished from religious power in that it not only (as does the latter) possesses power, but also uses its power in the service of law. Both belong to the essence of the state: power and law [Macht und das Recht].

A governing authority which bears the sword in vain, which no longer has the fortitude to decisively punish the law breaker, is in the process of burying itself. A state which removes the concepts "right" and "wrong" from jurisprudence and replaces them with "useful" and "injurious," "healthy" and "ill," "socially valuable" and "socially inferior," [a state] which in the place of the principle of remuneration places the principle of inoculation, a state which in its civil law dissolves marriage and family -- [such a state] ceases to be a constitutional state and thus the governing authority. A governing authority which knowingly or unknowingly makes the interests of social position or class the norm for the formation and definition of law, or which allows the norms of the law to be dictated by the so-called "legal consciousness" of the time, sinks to the level of raw power.

This danger exists now -- and this is not addressed by the Augustana -- for all governing authorities, and shall for all time. It exists especially in the modern democratic forms of government and in the dictatorship. For the result of the secularization process of the last century has been that the consciousness of eternal legal norms which are not determined by man has nearly perished. But where this consciousness ceases to exist, there God-given power is changed into demonic power, resulting in its ruin among peoples and states. But wherever on earth a governing authority -- irrespective of which form -- is conscious of a [civil] righteousness independent of its will, exercises the power of its office, upholds the law and guards the peace, there it is "God's good gift," there it is "by the grace of God."

What a juicy quote, eh? Sasse is evidently describing the sort of social development he saw in Germany ca. 1930, when this essay was first published. The door had been opened to the rightly infamous and undeniably diabolical socialism of Herr Adolph. The parallels to present-day America are uncanny.

Yet as Christians, we must ask whether a government "fulfills the tasks of the office of governing authority." Even a social democracy might accomplish that to some degree. If it does not, we should be able to describe how it does not, before we resist that government in any way.

What about the governing authority of King George, against which the Declaration of Independance was written? He may have been fulfilling the tasks of governing authority for his subjects east of the pond, but perhaps not for his subjects in America. I haven't quite reached a conclusion about this yet, but I think this might provide an acceptable meaning for the Declaration's statement about governments "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

What say you?

Since some of my fellow Americans seem to be mortally frightened of "theocracy," I'll help them back from the ledge by closing with Sasse's next paragraph, which states something important, but rather obvious to me. Unfortunately, it's not so obvious to everyone.

The task of the church over against the governing authorities is an especially difficult responsibility. It must guard itself against any illusion of a "Christian state" and must limit itself.

Debt is something owed that must be repayed. How can that be good? It's a liability, not an asset. We just refinanced our mortgage, which is good, because we've lowered the interest rate and eliminated the evil of private mortgage insurance from our household. Now, our monthly payments will be lower, and without PMI, our lender will be motivated at least partly by our own best interests.

Yet debt is still debt. It's still a bit scary to realize that you owe over a hundred thousand dollars. Within my short lifetime, home mortgages were less than the current price of a Corvette. Probably less than the going price of a Suburban. Now we can't even get into home ownership without laying out well over $100 grand. So, mortgage debt must be tolerated. At least the interest is deductible on income taxes.

We could pay off our mortgage completely in about three years, if we had no other expenses. That amount of debt may be normal, but it's still ominous. At least we don't have other debts at the moment. What I don't get, though, is why several people during our refinancing process encouraged us to borrow more than we needed to refinance the mortage. It might make sense for people whose poor judgment or legal circumstances have accumulated high-interest debt against them, but can that be so common? Have so many been brainwashed into thinking that carrying debt is a good thing?

If many people think carrying debt is good, that might explain why so many have little regard for the liability of their sins before God. Wrong beliefs about financial debt may spill over into wrong beliefs about spiritual debt. The use of debt as a picture of sin may be rather ineffective in a day when so many are looking for salvation in the form of government bailouts.

When I lived in Wisconsin, I enjoyed hearing news about a congressman from another district, Paul Ryan. (My own was Tammy Baldwin, an embarassment to Wisconsin.) Ryan was just getting started back then, but now is the ranking Republican on the House's budget committee. Today he presented an alternative budget, summarized here, which will be studiously ignored by the mainstream media. I see good things in there, definite improvements over the one from the White House. For example: not raising taxes. I see that as a good thing, considering that it was the Bush tax cuts that ended the last recession, and it was the Reagan tax cuts that began and encouraged the era of general prosperity lasting into the 1990's.

Yet as I looked at a comparison table, I noticed how huge the debt remains, even under this alternative budget. Since the numbers are so huge, it may be helpful to see the debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. As I understand it, the GDP is an estimate of our economy's total production of wealth for a given year. Since the United States is such a large (the largest?) world economy, it's a vast number. The debt our government would carry, as a percentage of GDP, is 82.4% under the White House budget. So to pay off that debt completely, the government would have to confiscate 82.4% of the wealth produced in America in a single year. Ominous barely covers it, especially when we notice how much of that debt is held in communist China. Under the alternative budget, it's "only" 65.1%.

I suppose that much debt is "necessary" because the government is trying to be "responsible" to its commitments, like Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements. But meeting those responsibilities by incurring massive debts doesn't seem so responsible. Wouldn't it make more sense to end those entitlements altogether? Yet I think I see the problem: an entitlement exists not only in the budget, but in the minds of American voters. They want to cheat death and hardship through governmental power, as long as possible. Until that changes, it's full speed ahead.

How can the attitude of voters be changed, so that they care about more than their own comforts; so that they consider the future of the United States as a greater good than illusory social "security?" If it can't be done, then the American democratic republic will devolve into a kind of tyranny, or topple altogether. If it can't, then the capitalist engine of American prosperity will be replaced with the sort of economy that brought the Soviet empire to its knees.

My simple suggestion is that state and federal governments budget to spend only what they expect to receive in tax revenue, every single year. To make that possible, they should read their constitutions and commit to do only the things enumerated there. The people should reform their sense of entitlement, and realize that suffering and death are inevitable in this fallen world. Yet (and here's the key) there is another, perfect world prepared for us, and to which we are all invited.
Faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is magnificently practical. When we are certain that we will have paradise in the life to come, we can cope and flourish much better in the imperfect here-and-now.

The answer to this problem, then, is bigger than the government. It's time for Christians to appreciate what we believe not only for its eternal value, but also for its present value. Let today be lived responsibly in faith, both personally and in cooperation with our neighbors. Let heaven be heaven, and until then, live here on earth, with certainty of God's favor through the death of Jesus Christ.

Then, I think, we could budget more sensibly.