Today’s Democrats: Anti-Christian, Anti-Israel, Anti-God

Anyone who considers himself a friend of God must have at least great pause when it comes to modern democrats and their political party. Never in the history of the U.S.—including the pro-slavery democrats of the 19th century—has a major American political party so distanced itself from the notion that, as President John Adams pointed out, “righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people.”

Of course, this is what happens when you’ve forgotten, ignored, or even embraced what is sin. This is what happens when “You live your truth” is the prevailing moral position. No one should be surprised that politicians who support the “right” to kill children in the womb, who championed the legal redefinition of the oldest institution in the history of humanity, and who now pretend that we can no longer rely on science, or common sense, or even simply our eyes to tell us who is a male and who is a female, would display open animus to people whose faith tells them such positions are immoral, and who live according to the notion that there is such a thing as absolute truth.

After all, if something is immoral, then perhaps it should be illegal—or at least not lawfully forced upon the unwilling. If there is such a thing as absolute truth, then perhaps our laws should reflect this truth. Democrats just can’t take the chance that such thinking will prevail in our legislatures, our courts, our classrooms, or even our churches. Thus, unless Christians can manage to get themselves elected—and bypass the scrutiny of hostile democrat overlords—our role in our government is increasingly imperiled.

This is especially true of Christians who wish to serve in the judiciary. Because liberals have long seen the courts as a “super-legislature” that they can use to enact their perverse agenda, tragically, Brett Kavanaugh will be far from the last Christian conservative judge who will draw the wicked ire of deceitful democrats who wish to derail such nominations.

Before Justice Kavanaugh, there were Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett and her loud “dogma.” Now we have “Sir” Brian C. Buescher of the Knights of Columbus. Democrat Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono recently and strongly implied that Judge Buescher’s membership in the two million-strong, 136-year-old Catholic service organization makes him unfit for the federal courts.

Of course what really troubled the Senate democrats is the position of the Knights of Columbus on abortion and marriage. Never mind that such positions are perfectly in line with centuries-old teachings of the Catholic Church and that disqualification on such grounds would bar from public service every Catholic who actually adheres to the Church’s teachings. As Matthew Continetti rightly notes,

My concern is the anti-Catholic sentiment manifest in the Democratic Party. Last March, Feinstein demanded to know if Michael Scudder, now confirmed to the Seventh Circuit, worked with his parish ‘to establish a residential crisis pregnancy center.” Last May, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island asked Peter J. Phipps, now confirmed as a district court judge, about the Knights. Last October, Feinstein, Harris, and three other Democrats wanted to know about the relationship between Fourth Circuit nominee Allison Jones Rushing and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nonprofit that supports religious liberty. Last November, Feinstein asked Third Circuit nominee Paul Matey, “If confirmed, will you recuse yourself from all cases in which the Knights of Columbus have taken a position?”

Right-minded Catholics should thank God that Trump was elected. As Rod Dreher reported, just prior to the 2016 election, a “new Wikileaks dump from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta’s emails reveals that Podesta created a couple of activist groups for the sake of undermining the Catholic bishops and the Church’s authority.” As Thomas Peters tweeted, “the head of Clinton’s campaign has been organizing to fracture a major religion.” Or, as Dreher rightly noted,

[A]t the senior level of the Democratic Party’s brain trust, a Clinton political operative — a Catholic! — created front groups specifically to undermine the authority of the Catholic bishops, and to separate the bishops from the people, as well as to secretly undermine Catholic teaching to make it more friendly to the Democratic Party’s agenda. Podesta ought to be excommunicated.

As Continetti also notes, democrats have not limited their religious bigotry to just Catholics or the courts:

Baptists and Episcopalians are also under scrutiny. In June 2017, Bernie Sanders clashed with Russell Vought, now acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, over a blog post Vought had written regarding Islam that several Muslim groups considered Islamophobic. “I'm a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith,” Vought said. By the end of the exchange, Sanders said, “I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.” Vought is an elder in his church, married, and has two daughters.

Democrats also largely opposed Mike Pompeo’s nomination as Secretary of State because of how his Christian faith informs and impacts his politics. Pompeo—a Presbyterian—has served as a deacon, is open about his faith, and has also indicated that he actually believes what the Bible says when it comes to life, sex, and marriage. In November of 2017, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, critically questioned federal district court nominee Trevor McFadden—an Anglican—over his church’s traditional (biblical) teachings on marriage and the family.

Leftist pundits and homosexual apologists (typically one-and-the-same and almost always democrats) were recently aghast, and seemingly shocked, that the Second Lady (wife of the Vice President), Karen Pence, actually lives out her Christian faith. What provoked the wrath of the left here is the fact that Mrs. Pence is returning to teach at a Christian school where the dogma of wicked LGBT movement is rightly regarded as sin.

Along with targeting Christians who believe what the Bible reveals on the significant moral issues of our time, modern democrats have also targeted Jews and the nation of Israel. It is not a stretch to say, as Monica Showalter recently did, that “The left has made itself a fount of anti-Semitism, with all major currents of its poison coming from its direction. Democrats have normalized it, promoted its participants and celebrated its advocates.”

The black left—almost exclusively democrats—as John Perazzo recently noted, is littered with racists and anti-Semites. These Jew-haters are not mere race pimps and publicity prostitutes à la Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but they are also elected democrats. As Warren Henry revealed last year prior to the 2018 midterms, “democrats are fielding even more anti-Semitic candidates for Congress.” They’re not just running, but winning.

As Henry points out, Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib—who profanely promised to impeach President Trump—“is representative of the Democratic Party’s gradual march beyond the embrace of candidates and officials who criticize Israeli policy or its current government to a much uglier place in politics.” Like a growing number of democrats in Congress, Tliab supports a “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with the “boycott, divestment, sanctions” (BDS) movement.

As Mr. Henry also notes,

To put this trend into context, consider that the U.S. State Department has adopted a “working definition” of anti-Semitism, as a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The “working definition” provides illustrations of anti-Semitism, including “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The founders and leaders of the BDS movement support a “one-state solution” that destroys Israel as Jewish state. The movement is the intellectual descendant of the 1945 Arab boycott, which did not distinguish between Jews and Israel. It is based on the premise that Israel is a racist apartheid state requiring the sort of action once taken against South Africa.

As Marc Greendorfer recently revealed,

While BDS has risen in the United States, so has anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic incidents have spiked from a low point of 751 incidents in 2013 to nearly 2,000 in 2017. It is no coincidence that the spread of a movement that demonizes Jews has had the same effect in the U.S. that similar campaigns had in the last 2,000 years.

As its proponents and leaders make clear, the real agenda of BDS is the destruction of Israel. Robert P. George of Princeton warns, leading democrats will soon altogether turn on Israel. The modern left hates Israel because the existence of a nation called Israel is one of the greatest evidences that the God of the Bible is real. They hate God—or at least the idea that there is a righteous God to whom we owe our very lives, to whom we are accountable, and whose Word we are to follow—so they hate Israel.

This is also why the left hates Christianity. Authentic Christianity points people to the truth. As a California church recently and faithfully declared, “Bruce Jenner is still a man. Homosexuality is still a sin. The culture may change, the Bible does not.” Not many years ago in America, such a church sign would’ve been met, not with protests, but a chorus of “Tell us something we don’t know!” In today’s perverse world, such truth is protested, and the pastor behind posting the sign is forced to resign.

The left’s perversions and deceit seem to know no bounds, thus we are left stating and debating what was once almost universally accepted. This is what results when a major political party of the world’s most powerful nation is so often on the wrong side of the truth.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

The Marriage “Precedent”

There’s “precedent” and then there’s precedent. It seems for Maine’s Senator Susan Collins—who’s never been considered a conservative and is the very definition of a RINO—precedent is everything, except when it isn’t. According to Townhall recently,

Maine's moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins told CNN's Jake Tapper today that she would not be supporting a Supreme Court nominee who has “demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade” because, in her mind, that would be a justice who does not respect established precedent.

Collins added,

I want a judge who will apply the law to the facts of the case with fidelity to the Constitution. Roe v. Wade is a constitutional right that is well established, and no less an authority than Chief Justice Roberts said that repeatedly at his confirmation hearing.

Because, you know, when you are killing the most helpless and innocent among us, you’re supposed to think “fidelity to the Constitution.” A long-time U.S. Senator—especially one who is so often called upon concerning the same moral issues, should not be so careless with her words. Roe v. Wade is not a right in and of itself but rather is a court case that found a “right” that, prior to 1973, had escaped every previous jurist in the history of the U.S. judicial system.

In getting their perverse agenda into law, if only today’s liberals would limit themselves to things that are actually “constitutional.” Even the pro-slavery Americans of the 18th century were willing to get their way via the Constitution. And legal slavery was forever ended in the United States constitutionally, via an amendment, not by the mere ruling of a judge or a majority of judges.

But winning elections and actually achieving law the way our founders intended has proven far too difficult for liberals and the party they own. Thus, the courts have long been a favorite tool of the modern left. Don’t get me wrong, though. As November, 2016 well demonstrates, liberals love to win elections—and hate to lose them! Because so many of them have made a god of government, liberals very much enjoy obtaining all the political power possible, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, and they are loathe to see it in the hands of those opposed to their perverse agenda.

As most today well know, much of what modern liberals hold dear was achieved because of the efforts of rogue judges who happened to find in the U.S. Constitution what had so long escaped so many others (because, of course, it was never really there). Liberals look at the Constitution like an NBA referee: based on who’s playing the game, the rules are changed. Of course, liberals wouldn’t describe it as such; they simply justify this foolish mental and moral gymnastics by claiming a “living Constitution.”

As the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia—who repeatedly stood against such nonsense—said, “the Constitution is not an organism, it is a legal document…(it) is an enduring document but not a ‘living’ one, and its meaning must be protected and not repeatedly altered to suit the whims of society.”

And once liberals magically find a “right” in the Constitution—and thus, “make law”—we’re supposed to revere said law because of “precedent.” How absurd. If “precedent” really mattered to anyone with a sound legal and moral mind, Obergefell v. Hodges would’ve been laughed out of the courtroom in 30 seconds.

The vast majority of states that actually took the trouble to deal with marriage legislatively —including even Collins’ home state of Maine—overwhelmingly voted to establish the biblical definition of marriage as law. In other words, when actually put to a vote, 31 states in the U.S.—including very liberal states such as Maine and California—soundly rejected same-sex “marriage.” How’s that for “precedent?” By one single vote in the U.S. Supreme Court (Good Riddance, Justice Kennedy!), liberals wiped this away.

One might argue that “precedent” in the legal sense is a judicial term that refers to the rulings of a higher court. As legaldictionary.net notes,

In the modern legal system, the term precedent refers to a rule, or principle of law, that has been established by a previous ruling by a court of higher authority, such as an appeals court, or a supreme court.

Of course, there is no higher court than the one led by Him who made us. Dr. Martin Luther King alluded to this in his letter from the Birmingham jail. He noted, “[T]here are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws.” And we agree with Dr. King, who agreed with Saint Augustine that, “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Dr. King also reminds us of the difference:

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

For human beings, there is no law more “eternal” than that which defines marriage. As I’ve often noted before, marriage is the oldest institution in the history of humanity—older than God’s covenant with the nation of Israel, older than The Law, older than the church. Marriage is one of the earliest truths revealed by God. As the first three chapters of Genesis reveal, before we were even aware of the preciousness of life—because there was no death—humans were made aware of what is a marriage.

Additionally, whenever Jesus, or any other of the New Testament writers—who often used marriage as an illustration of the relationship between Jesus and His church—spoke of marriage, it was always as the union of one man and one woman. Whether life, marriage, and the like, there’s nothing with more precedent than the eternal truth. We would all—especially U.S. Senators and those on the highest courts in our land—do well to remember such.

(See this column at American Thinker and The Black Sphere.)

Copyright 2018, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

If Your Church is Celebrating Darwin, Leave (and Don’t Come Back)

The 200th anniversary of the birth of devoted Materialist and Evolutionist Charles Darwin was in 2009. It was that year that I first became aware of “Evolution Weekend.” Originally “Evolution Sunday,” Evolution Weekend is the product of The Clergy Letter Project. This project exists to promote the teaching of Darwinian evolution, especially within religious institutions. For example, the letter to Christian clergy, in part, reads,

While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook…Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts. 

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.

First of all, a common criticism from Darwinists of all flavors—from the true believers: ardent atheists, to the spongy “theistic evolutionists” (ironically seen as heretics by the faithful on both sides of the evolution debate)—is that Christians who accept the biblical account of the origin of mankind are making the mistake of reading the Bible (especially Genesis) “literally.”

As apologist Greg Koukl puts it, the question “Do you take the Bible literally?” is ambiguous, confusing, and awkward to answer. The best way to answer such a question is that we (“literalists”) take the Bible literally when it is meant to be taken literally. In other words, as Koukl puts it, we read the Bible in its “ordinary sense.” (“When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense.”)

A good analogy that Koukl provides is the reading of a modern day sports page. When a sportswriter says that one team “crushed,” “destroyed,” or “annihilated” its opponent, no one speculates or frets about literal meanings. When we read that the Georgia Bulldogs “steam-rolled” the Florida Gators, there is no investigation into whether state highway equipment went missing during what used to be known as “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.” Though certainly a more difficult read than a sports page, we are to approach reading the Bible in the same way.

Additionally, when it comes to believing miraculous events recorded in the Bible, whether the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, or the miracle of a literal six-day creation, the inconsistency applied by “evolutionary creationists” is fascinating and troubling. After all, why believe in the resurrection of Jesus? Has science proven how we can raise the dead?

After His resurrection, why did Jesus chastise the two disciples on the road to Emmaus? Was it because they failed biology 101? “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” In other words, why did you not believe what was written?! If one will doubt the creation account, why believe the prophets? Why believe any of the accounts of supernatural events in Scripture?

What’s more, if Genesis is a “metaphor,” then all the rest of Scripture is in question. There is much evidence throughout all of Scripture to support the fact that Genesis is literal history. Many other books directly refer to Genesis and its characters in a way that shows they were regarded as nothing but historical people and events. Consider how often the New Testament refers to Genesis and its characters. Dozens of times Adam, Eve, the Serpent (Satan), Cain, Abel, Noah, the Flood, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Lot, and so on, are directly (and indirectly) referenced. They are spoken of as real historical characters, not mythological beings.

In Romans chapter 5 Paul refers directly to Adam and compares him to Christ as “a pattern of the one to come.” First Corinthians 15:22 states, “For as in Adam all die, so as in Christ all will be made alive.” This refers to all of humanity being under the same curse of death that was placed on Adam, because we all are his descendants. Second Corinthians 11:2 says, “…just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning…” thus making a direct reference to Eve, Satan, and The Fall.

Secondly, all truth—whether deemed “scientific” or “religious”—exists to reveal God. (“For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and his divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”) Anything or anyone that purports to have information that denies God, or His Word, is a lie.

Thirdly, the Clergy Letter Project heretics got at least something right: there is no conflict between the Bible and “modern science” (or ancient science, or future science). The word “science” is derived from the Latin word “scientia,” meaning “knowledge.” It is frequently overlooked that every side of the creation/evolution debate derives their knowledge from certain governing presuppositions.

In other words, whether a person is a creationist or an evolutionist, or some combination of the two, eventually he or she must eventually rely on certain un-provable assumptions. As the late philosopher, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, put it, “At the most fundamental level of everyone’s thinking and beliefs there are primary convictions about reality, man, the world, knowledge, truth, behavior, and such things. Convictions about which all other experience is organized, interpreted, and applied.”

Thus neither side in the evolution debate can use exclusively the methods of science to verify their primary convictions. The scientific method of observing, measuring, testing, and repeating does not work when it comes to revealing exactly how life began. In spite of what some devoted evolutionists would have us believe, no one has ever observed or been able to experimentally repeat evolution that shows one kind of creature changing into another. We certainly have never seen life created in a Petri dish.

Of course, neither have we observed someone creating matter or speaking life into existence. However, what the creation account has that the Darwinian account lacks is a written record of events. Now, many are quick to discount the biblical record of events as fiction, but this is typically because the accounts of events recorded in Scripture directly contradict the primary convictions of Darwinian evolution (D.E.).

An atheist who completely denies God and the Bible and holds molecules to man evolution up as absolute truth has a more logically defensible position than the Christian who wants to mix evolution and Scripture. D.E. teaches that all life—plant, animal, human—billions of years ago sprang from the same single-celled source, strictly as a product of nature and natural processes (billions of years of death and struggle). Thus, as a liberal writer at Salon put it,

“Darwin…explained the evolution of life in a way that doesn’t require the hand of God.” (His piece is gleefully entitled “God is on the Ropes,” and writes about the “brilliant new science”—isn’t it always—that expands on Darwin’s work and will finally liberate us from any idea that God was involved in creating life.)

Many, including those who call themselves Christians and/or conservatives, would like to ignore this tenet of D.E. Even the rabid atheist and Darwinist Richard Dawkins understands the fallacy here. When asked recently what was the particular point at which he was able to conclude that God doesn’t exist, Dawkins replied that “by far” the most significant event for him was “understanding evolution.” He went on to say that he thought the evangelical Christians have it “sort-of” right when they see (Darwinian) evolution as “the enemy,” adding that there “really is a deep incompatibility between evolution and Christianity.” The “sophisticated theologians” who are “quite happy to live with evolution” are, as Dawkins puts it, “deluded.” How sad that it takes an atheist to point out the truth in this debate!

And if your church is so “deluded,” leave now and don’t go back.

Copyright 2017, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Illegal Immigration/Refugees: A Christian Perspective

Several years ago (2013) I wrote, Illegal Immigration: A Christian Perspective. Given the debate over President Trump's executive order on refugees, the aforementioned piece deserves another read. Also, some additional excellent points in this same vein have recently been made by others, notably Dr. Michael Brown. As he notes in his recent piece, Who Are the Real Bible-Quoting Hypocrites?

These one-time Bible-mockers are now quoting the words of the Torah in the Old Testament – yes, those supposedly antiquated, misogynist, bigoted words – reminding us of Israel’s calling to care for the refugee and the foreigner in their midst. 

Of course, I totally affirm this ethic and call, and since we are a nation of immigrants, it applies all the more to us, just as it applied especially to the people of Israel, who themselves had been mistreated when they lived in Egypt: Don’t do to the foreigners what Egypt did to you! 

But let’s put this compassionate command in context. The ancient Israelites were first commanded to exterminate the Canaanites who lived in the land they were about to inherit – including men, women, and children – because the spiritual and moral wickedness of the Canaanites was so great that it would pollute and destroy the Israelites should any survive. 

That’s what I call extreme, yet it was a one-time command for ancient Israel, only after God waited 400 years until the wickedness of the Canaanites reached horrific proportions (see Genesis 15:16). 

So then, the same God who called for compassion on the non-hostile foreigner seeking refuge among the people of Israel also called for the elimination of hostile foreigners (similar to candidate Trump’s call to “bomb the h-ll out of Isis”). 

Not only so, but the non-hostile foreigners who took refuge in Israel were required to assimilate into Israel’s culture and were expected to live by Israel’s laws (see, e.g., Numbers 15:29). Is that a standard we’re ready to apply here as well?

Also, as Biblical scholar James K. Hoffmeier (who has a book on this matter) wrote several years ago,

From the foregoing texts we can conclude that in the ancient biblical world, countries had borders that were protected and respected, and that foreigners who wanted to reside in another country had to obtain some sort of permission in order to be considered an alien with certain rights and privileges. The delineation between the “alien” or “stranger” (ger) and the foreigner (nekhar or zar) in biblical law is stark indeed. The ger in Israelite society, for instance, could receive social benefits such as the right to glean in the fields (Leviticus 19:9-10; Deuteronomy 24:19-22) and they could receive resources from the tithes (Deuteronomy 26:12-13). In legal matters, “there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the LORD. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you” (Numbers 15:15-16). In the area of employment, the ger and citizen were to be paid alike (Deuteronomy 24:14-15). In all these cases, no such provision is extended to the nekhar or zar. In a sense, the ger were not just aliens to whom social and legal protections were offered, but were also considered converts, and thus could participate in the religious life of the community, e.g. celebrate Passover (Exodus 12:13) and observe Yom Kippur, the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:29-30). They were, moreover, expected to keep dietary and holiness laws (Leviticus 17:8-9 & 10-12). It is well known that within Israelite society, money was not to be lent with interest, but one could loan at interest to a foreigner (nekhar). These passages from the Law make plain that aliens or strangers received all the benefits and protection of a citizen, whereas the foreigner (nekhar) did not. It is wrong, therefore, to confuse these two categories of foreigners and then to use passages regarding the ger as if they were relevant to illegal immigrants of today.

My piece from 2013:

As immigration dominates our political discourse, operating from a Christian worldview, as I always seek to do, it has been rather difficult for me to get my mind around what is the mind of Christ on this issue. It becomes even more difficult when attempting to apply the Christian worldview to what amounts to a secular political solution.

In my research for this column, I came across several great conversations/columns on immigration from a Christian worldview. (They are archived here.) While examining these conversations, one thing is clear: even within the Christian community there is a wide variety of opinion on how best to reform our immigration policy. This is even true, though to a lesser extent, in the more conservative evangelical community.

What makes the issue of immigration more challenging than topics like abortion or marriage is that there is not clear-cut biblical direction on the matter. Some who favor a more liberal position on immigration often point to Leviticus 19 or Deuteronomy 24 (go read them) when making their arguments in favor of an open-borders type policy.

However, as Alan F. H. Wisdom, then vice president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) noted nearly three six years ago,

The United States is not analogous to ancient Israel. Biblical ‘sojourners’ [aliens or foreigners] are not easily comparable to modern-era illegal immigrants. The ‘foreigners’ in ancient Israel were non-Israelites who were permitted to pass through or reside in Israel. They were required to comply with Israel's laws and respect its customs.

Wisdom adds, “Weighing the costs and benefits of immigration is complex. Immigrants often have valuable skills. Their cultures enrich our national life. The Christians among them can renew our churches with their fervent faith. At the same time, large-scale immigration imposes burdens. Taxpayers bear new expenses for education, social services, health care, and law enforcement.”

Weighing the cost of illegal immigration must be an important part of any discussion on immigration reform. A 2010 study says that the cost is $113 billion annually. According to the report, the single largest cost—about $52 billion a year—comes from educating the children of illegal immigrants. “Nearly all those costs are absorbed by state and local governments,” the report concludes. This is significant because, although illegal immigrants do contribute to the tax base (through sales taxes and the like), they rarely are property owners and local property taxes are the chief source of funding for public education.

In addition, uninsured illegals cost American taxpayers over $4 billion a year in healthcare costs. This includes receiving Medicaid benefits. According to Kaiser Healthcare News, “Federal law generally bars immigrants who enter this country illegally from being covered by Medicaid. But a little-known part of the state-federal health insurance program for the poor has long paid about $2 billion a year for emergency treatment for a group of patients who, according to hospitals, mostly comprise illegal immigrants.”

One often neglected aspect of this debate, especially within the Christian community, is the role of the Mexican government in the matter. Whatever the number of illegal immigrants is (Some estimates place the current total at about 11 million. Others say the number may be as high as 20 million, while some put it at over 40 million.), there is little doubt that most hail from Mexico. In 2005, a Pew Hispanic Center report said that 56% were from Mexico. In 2011, the Congressional Budget Office reported that it was 62%.

Most of these Mexicans are poor, low-skilled laborers who are looking for a better life in the U.S. The government of Mexico seems very content with the status-quo when it comes to the virtual open-border policy that currently exists within the U.S. As a column in FrontPage Mag recently noted, “The message of the Mexican government to its citizens is: You want a job, human rights and medical care, then go to the US if you can’t afford it here.”

Of course, to a great extent, illegal immigrants don’t have to “afford” things in America. As I already implied, they have significant access to a myriad of government services (food stamps, schools, Medicaid, and so on.) in the U.S. Combine such state welfare with the billions of dollars ($25 billion in 2007—about 3% of Mexican GDP) earned by Mexican immigrants (legal and illegal) and sent back to their homeland, and it seems that Mexico is reaping quite a financial benefit.

However, as FrontPage also notes, with so many Mexicans able to leave their country for work and welfare, the Mexican government has little incentive to improve conditions there. And despite decades of illegal immigration, economic and living conditions for poor Mexicans have improved little, if at all. Thus, the current immigration policies of the U.S. have made us an enabler, hurting not only the American taxpayer, but the millions of poor who are still living in Mexico. Is this very Christ-like?

It should be pointed out that, if we did not have the massive welfare state that exists (for citizens and non-citizens alike) in America today, it is unlikely that we would be having such a fierce debate over current immigration policy.

If within the Christian community we can’t even come to a consensus on matters such as abortion, homosexuality, and marriage, it seems to me very unlikely that we will ever get to a clear agreement on immigration. What Christians should seek, says Dr. Daniel Carroll Rodas, Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Denver Theological Seminary and author of Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible,

is a moral compass from the Bible, not a blueprint for policy. To imitate how an ancient people dealt in its laws with foreigners in that agrarian peasant context does not make sense…But this legislation was seen as judicious and as a pointer to the God of Israel (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). In other words, the law contains a set of enduring principles that can be carried across borders and across the centuries.

And just as was ancient Israel, we are a nation of laws. “No man will contend that a nation can be free that is not governed by fixed laws,” said John Adams. President Clinton, in his 1996 State of the Union Address declared, “We should honor every legal immigrant here, working hard to become a new citizen. But we are also a nation of laws.”

Though we are a nation of laws, those laws should not be 1200 pages each! (Such volume alone should disqualify any bill.) Writing in the Federalist Papers, James Madison instructs us that “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

Lastly, as well meaning Christians debate immigration, we must remember that, along with the obvious call to be compassionate and forgiving, as Mark Tooley, the current president of the IRD puts it, we must remember “Christianity’s understanding of the state’s divine obligation to enforce laws and protect its people.”

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2017, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the brand new book The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

A Defense of "Creationism"

Anyone who has given the creation/evolution debate even a cursory following has heard the creation position described as “creationism.” One rarely, if ever, hears of “evolutionism,” as though only one side (evolution) of this debate is rooted completely in logic and reason, without any un-provable premises.

It is very often overlooked that when it comes to the question of how life began on earth, people on every side of this debate have the same evidence (rocks, fossils, current living things, and other measurable objects), use the same equipment (microscopes, telescopes, labs, and so on), and employ the same techniques to support their positions.

It is also frequently overlooked that every side of the creation/evolution debate derives their knowledge (The word “science” is derived from the Latin word “scientia,” meaning “knowledge.”) from certain governing presuppositions. In other words, whether a person is a creationist or an evolutionist, or some combination of the two, eventually he or she must eventually rely on certain un-provable assumptions. As the late philosopher, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, put it, “At the most fundamental level of everyone's thinking and beliefs there are primary convictions about reality, man, the world, knowledge, truth, behavior, and such things. Convictions about which all other experience is organized, interpreted, and applied.”

Likewise, theologian, author, and pastor, R.C. Sproul, in 2009 discussed the “lasting impression” that the book, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, which he read over 50 years ago, had made upon him. He noted that the book was so influential to him because it “clearly set forth the importance of understanding that all scientific theories presuppose certain philosophical premises.”

The concept of “primary convictions” or presupposed “philosophical premises” is important when it comes to the creation/evolution debate. The devout creationist has primary convictions that are rooted in the Genesis account of creation. The devout evolutionist has primary convictions that are rooted in purely naturalistic forces.

Neither side can use exclusively the methods of science to verify their primary convictions. The scientific method of observing, measuring, testing, and repeating does not work when it comes to revealing exactly how life began. In spite of what some devoted evolutionists would have us believe, no one has ever observed or been able to experimentally repeat evolution that shows one kind of creature changing into another. We certainly have never seen life created in a Petri dish.

Of course, neither have we observed someone creating matter or speaking life into existence. However, what the creation account has that the Darwinian account lacks is a written record of events. Now, many are quick to discount the biblical record of events as fiction, but this is typically because the accounts of events recorded in Scripture directly contradict the primary convictions of Darwinian evolution.

Evolutionists know that such a historical narrative is desirable. Ernst Mayr, considered one of the most influential evolutionists of the 20^th century, put it this way:

Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is an historical science—the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain.

How does the evolutionist construct this historical narrative? By assuming (using primary convictions) that “the present is key to the past.” Today’s evolutionist observes “change over time” within certain species, such as with peppered moths, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, insecticide-resistant bugs and the like, and uses such evidence to support billions of years and molecules-to-man evolution.

In accepting the biblical narrative of creation, Creationists typically support the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. This doctrine is deduced from two biblical conclusions: the Bible is the Word of God and God is never in error. However, interpretations of the account of creation vary within those who accept biblical inerrancy. In other words, conversely, not all who accept biblical inerrancy accept the six days of creation that a straight-forward reading of the book of Genesis reveals.

Creationists who accept the six-day account in Genesis do so by practicing a form of hermeneutics known as the literal historical-grammatical approach. This method attempts to find the literal meaning of a text based on an understanding of the historical and cultural settings in which it was written.

Following accepted rules of grammar and noting the particular style of the book (historical, poetic, prophetic, and so on), conclusions about proper interpretation are then reached. Borrowing from Dr. David Cooper, we get a clear, if not succinct, summary of the literal historical-grammatical approach: When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. Therefore, using the standard meaning, form, and syntax of the words in use; and understanding the proper historical position of the author; take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise.

Or, as Screwtape put it to his demon protégé, “The documents say what they say and cannot be added to.”

The validity of the literal historical-grammatical approach is supported by multiple facts. First of all, a scholarly approach to the New Testament reveals that, when interpreting the Old Testament, this approach was taken by both New Testament authors and characters.

Of course, there are many references to the Old Testament in the New Testament. Consider for a moment only the references to the book of Genesis. Every New Testament author either directly quotes or alludes to Genesis. Dozens of times Adam, Eve, the Serpent (Satan), Cain, Abel, Noah, the Flood, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Lot, Sodom, Gomorrah, and so on, are directly (and indirectly) referenced. They are spoken of as literal historical characters and events, not mythological beings and occurrences.

Jesus Himself referred to Genesis several times. When asked about marriage, He quoted directly from Genesis chapters one and two. Speaking of marriage as a union of one man and one woman, Jesus used the phrase “from the beginning of creation,” which only makes sense if he was talking about a literal Day 6 of creation. In other words, Jesus understood the text exactly as it was supposed to be understood—exactly as the author intended for it to be understood. Jesus also referenced Sodom, the Flood, Abraham, Noah, and Lot—and again, did so in a nothing but literal historical manner.

Paul, in Romans—the “caput et summa universae doctrinae christianae” (“the summary of the whole of Christian doctrine”)—chapter 5 referred directly to Adam and compared him to Christ as “a pattern of the one to come.” He also added, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men…Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness (Jesus’ atoning death) was justification that brings life to all men.” Thus, the man who wrote nearly half of the New Testament saw Adam as not only a real historical figure, but as essential to the Christian doctrine of sin and death.

Secondly, the literal historical-grammatical approach is how most early church fathers interpreted Scripture. These men were “theologians after the apostles.” As Dr. James Mook put it,

Most of the Church Fathers interpreted Genesis 1 in a plain and straightforward way, as actual history. The six days were 24-hour days. Ephraim (Ephrem) the Syrian (306–373) and Basil of Caesarea (329–379) argued for the literal sense of Scripture against the distortions of allegory. Basil said twenty-four hours fill up the space of one day. Even Ambrose of Milan (330–397), mentor of Augustine, believed each day consisted of twenty-four hours, including both day and night. In addition to this, the Fathers believed that the earth was less than 6,000 years old.

Also, this hermeneutical philosophy is consistent with how we speak, hear, read, and write in our everyday communication. Real communication cannot happen otherwise, as trying to understand one another becomes a ridiculous exercise where one misses the forest because of the trees. Or, as C.S. Lewis, when discussing Modern (liberal) Theology and Biblical Criticism, put it: “These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read [in any sense worth discussing] the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and can’t see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight.”

The use of the word “day” in Genesis chapter one provides an excellent example of how the literal historical-grammatical approach works. The Hebrew word for day used in Genesis chapter 1 is “yom.” A number and the phrase “evening and morning” are used for each of the six Days of Creation. In Scripture outside Genesis 1, yom is used with a number 410 times. Each time it means an ordinary day. In Scripture outside Genesis 1, yom is used with the word “evening” or “morning” 23 times. “Evening” and “morning” appear in association, but without yom, 38 times. All 61 times the text refers to an ordinary day. Why would Genesis 1 be the exception for the use of yom?

In addition, in Exodus 20:8-11, the fourth commandment instructs the Israelites to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Thus, the seven-day week (six-day work week) is established as Moses records that “in six days the Lord made the heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” Any number of words or phrases could have been used here, but again, “yom” is used in both parts with the same context as in Genesis chapter one. Therefore, the only logical and common-sense conclusion is that “day” here means a 24-hour period.

Of course, many devout Darwinists will reply, “So what!” Their conclusion is that the Bible is inaccurate on many points, with the use of “day” in this context being another. Thus, in the creation/evolution debate, what we see more often than not is sincere (or at least self-proclaiming) Christians pitted against one-another: those accepting a literal six-day creation, and those who reject such a literal reading of the creation account, but nevertheless, and to varying degrees, believe that God is the creator of the material universe.

It is (sadly, in my opinion) the latter view which is more prominent in mainline Christianity—both Protestant and Catholic—in the U.S. Such a view of creation is often referred to as “theistic evolution,” though many reject this label. Secular humanist and non-theist Eugenie Scott, Director for the U.S. National Center for Science Education, notes that “In one form or another, Theistic Evolutionism is the view of creation taught at the majority of mainline Protestant seminaries, and it is the official position of the Catholic Church.”

According to Callie Joubert of Answers Research Journal, although “some proponents of theistic evolution such as (Francis) Collins (2007), and Giberson and Collins (2011) prefer BioLogos, and others such as Denis Lamoureux (2010a) prefer ‘evolutionary creation,’ they all share their three core beliefs with other variants of theistic evolution, such as the emergentism, panentheism, process theism, or naturalistic theism of Barbour (1990), Clayton (2000; 2006), Griffin (2000), and the late Arthur Peacocke (2006).” Lamoureux, the author of Evolutionary Creation and of I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution, sums up these “core beliefs” well when he states that science “reveals how the Creator made” the world, “while the Bible (reveals) precisely who created it.”

Vaguely articulating the Anglican (especially the Episcopal Church in the U.S., and the Church of England) position on creation and evolution, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams said

I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories. Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it’s not a theory alongside theories…My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it.

The official Anglican position is laid out in Catechism of Creation Part II: Creation and Science. This document attempts to reconcile a “conflict” between “science and the Bible.” (Though, I know of no one, especially those who intelligently articulate the six-day creation position, who see a conflict between science and the Bible. This is a common straw-man argument thrown out by those wanting to compromise creation and evolution.) “There is a middle way,” states the Catechism, “which some call a Complementary approach.”

The Catechism asks, “Is it proper to speak of an evolving creation?” Of course, the answer is “Yes.” Reflecting the “Complementary approach,” the Catechism adds “[Astronomers] are able to see our universe at many stages of cosmic evolution since its beginning in the Big Bang.  Here on earth biologists, paleontologists, geneticists and other scientists are showing that life has evolved over four billion years, and are reconstructing evolution’s history.  None of these scientific discoveries and the theories that explain them stands in conflict with what the Bible reveals about God’s relationship to the creation.”

The problems with such a “Complementary approach” are myriad. I submit that an atheistic Darwinist, who completely denies God and the Bible, while proclaiming molecules to man evolution as absolute truth, has a more logically defensible position than the Christian who wants to compromise Darwinian evolution and Scripture.

In addition to violating the approach to Scripture interpretation taken by Christ, the New Testament authors, and the early church fathers, such a compromise misrepresents the nature of God. Scripture reveals God’s creation work is “very good” and “perfect.” Also, Genesis reveals that there was no death until the sin of mankind. In direct contradiction to the Genesis record, Darwinian evolution requires billions of years of death and struggle before we see the first humans.

What’s more, and perhaps worst of all, a compromise between evolution and creation mythologizes the biblical account of the redemptive work of Jesus. (See the Romans reference above.) Jesus came to save all people. Save from what?  From sin and death. How did sin and death come to all people? By what is revealed in Genesis.

If we don’t have a literal Creator, a literal creation, a literal Adam, a literal Eve, a literal serpent, a literal garden, a literal tree, a literal fruit, and a literal fall, why did Jesus have to come and die for our sins?

At this point, it needs to be clarified what it means to take the Bible “literally.” As apologist Greg Koukl puts it, the question “Do you take the Bible literally?” is ambiguous, confusing, and awkward to answer. The best way to answer such a question is that we (“literalists”) take the Bible literally when it is meant to be taken literally. In other words, as Koukl puts it, we read the Bible in its “ordinary sense.” (“When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense.”)

A good analogy that Koukl provides is the reading of a modern day sports page. When a sportswriter says that one team “crushed,” “destroyed,” or “annihilated” its opponent, no one speculates or frets about literal meanings. When we read that the Georgia Bulldogs “steam-rolled” the Florida Gators, there is no investigation into whether state highway equipment went missing during what used to be known as “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.” Though certainly a more difficult read than a sports page, we are to approach reading the Bible in the same way.

Additionally, when it comes to believing miraculous events recorded in the Bible, whether the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, or the miracle of a literal six-day creation, the inconsistency applied by “evolutionary creationists” is fascinating and troubling. After all, why believe in the resurrection of Jesus? Has science proven how we can raise the dead?

After His resurrection, why did Jesus chastise the two disciples on the road to Emmaus? Was it because they failed biology 101? “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” In other words, why did you not believe what was written?! If one will doubt the creation account, why believe the prophets? Why believe any of the accounts of supernatural events in Scripture?

A bias against the supernatural is pervasive throughout the evolutionary community and, I believe due to the willingness and the attempt by many Christians to reconcile Darwinian evolution with Scripture, sadly has infected the Christian community as well. For example, about a year ago several churches in my community, Gainesville, GA—one of the most conservative and Christian areas of the country—sponsored a seminar held by “progressive Christian” Marcus Borg.

The pastor of First Baptist Church Gainesville said that Borg “speaks of an emerging paradigm to see faith and practice faith in an age of science and technology.” The implication here is that in our “modern” age of science and technology, we need a new approach to understand our faith. We need a new way to understand Christianity without having to believe in things like virgin births, water turning to wine, the instant healing of the blind and leprous, the raising of the dead, and so on. Because, of course, science—especially Darwinian evolution—tells us that these things are not possible.

In other words, if it can’t be explained in the natural, then it must not be true. This is certainly the belief of the “Jesus Seminar” of which Dr. Borg has been affiliated for decades. Begun in 1985, the Jesus Seminar is a group of self-described scholars (I’d be willing to bet that each one of them is a Darwinist.) who attempt to discover the “historical Jesus.” According to Koukl, “they have rejected as myth the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the virgin birth, all Gospel miracles, and a full 82% of the teachings normally attributed to Jesus—all dismissed as legendary accretions with no historical foundation.”

Thinking themselves “brilliant” and unique, the Jesus Seminar (and any similar movement) “scholars” are only undertaking what the demon Screwtape (in the early 1940s) told us happens “every thirty years or so.” Each “historical Jesus,” Screwtape reveals, is “unhistorical—something which does not exist.”

In 1995, J.P. Moreland rightly concluded that the Jesus Seminar operates from an “unfalsifiable presupposition” that is rooted in naturalism. Thus, he notes, any event in the Bible that is deemed supernatural is automatically dismissed as unhistorical. Of course, this especially includes the act of God speaking into creation the entire universe.

Though many who attempt to seek a compromise with evolution and creation do not reach Borg’s extremes, this is eventually what results once compromise with Scripture creeps in: We get so-called Christians whose teaching and “preaching” are almost completely devoid of historical and biblical Christianity. This is why compromise with Darwinian evolution is so dangerous.

Such compromise is why we have the Episcopal Church in the U.S. saying not only that homosexuality is no longer a sin, but going so far as to ordain openly homosexual priests. This is why we have the Church of England willing to “bless” same-sex relationships. When Scripture is so compromised, it becomes very difficult to call upon the authority of the Word of God in any matter, but especially when it comes to calling sin what it really is.

Lastly, perhaps the most common accusation hurled at Christians who accept the biblical account of creation is that we are ignorant anti-science boobs (or something similar). Nothing could be further from the truth. What’s more, at times it seems that the (ridiculous) implication is that nothing in science can get done unless it is done from an evolutionary worldview. This is certainly the case in fields related to biology, but many Darwinian evolutionists would have us believe that everything from anesthesiology to zoology rests upon Darwinian evolution. Given that Darwin proposed his theory just over 150 years ago, it’s a wonder that anything at all was accomplished in science prior to 1850.

Of course, much was. As I have noted before, anyone past (such as Pasteur, Pascal, Newton, Kepler, et al) or present can practice good science while operating from a biblical worldview. If this is not the case, then how did Newton, considered by many the greatest scientist of all time, ever invent calculus and develop his laws of motion and universal gravitation while operating from a strict biblical worldview? Newton also calculated the age of the earth to be only a few thousand years and declared, “For an educated man…any suggestion that the human past extended back further than 6,000 years was a vain and foolish speculation.”

If science and religion are “fundamentally incompatible,” how did Pasteur, “the father of microbiology” and a firm believer in God and His Word, ever discover the principles of vaccination, fermentation, and pasteurization? If Darwinian evolution is “biology’s greatest theory,” then why did Pasteur directly oppose Darwin and his theory, all the while conducting experiments to enhance the Law of Biogenesis?

Certainly ours is not a blind and ignorant faith. Though we can’t prove or disprove the supernatural through natural means, this does not mean that there is a lack of evidence for what we believe. As the Apostle Paul noted as he stood before King Agrippa, “What I am saying is true and reasonable.” For the things upon which our faith rests were not “done in a corner.” We know in whom we believe. The evidence is within Scripture as well as outside of it.

The science of archaeology has been a great friend to Christianity. Noted Jewish archaeologist Nelson Glueck wrote: “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted (his word) a biblical reference.” He asserts that the “incredibly accurate historical memory of the Bible…is fortified by archaeological fact.”

The great archaeologist William F. Albright states that,

There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of the Old Testament tradition.” Millar Burrows of Yale, a leading authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, observes that “Archaeology has in many cases refuted the views of modern critics. It has shown in a number of instances that these views rest on false assumptions…

He explains such unbelief:

The excessive skepticism of many liberal theologians stems not from a careful evaluation of the available data, but from an enormous predisposition against the supernatural.

An acceptance of the biblical account of creation does nothing to hinder anyone in any arena of science. However, a denial of the creation account places significant logical burdens upon those who still want to hold to other truths of God’s Word.

(See this column on Real Clear Religion.)

Copyright 2014, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor is the author of: The Miracle and Magnificence of America
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Why Big Government Can't Do Charity

Lost in all the uproar over Obamacare, and for that matter, in virtually every debate over government “entitlements” or “handouts” or whatever you want to call them, is the fact that, when it comes to charity, our government is just about the last place that one should turn. Time and again, Big Government liberals love to paint themselves as the champions of the poor and down-trodden—while at the same time making conservatives out to be selfish brutes (when, in reality, conservatives are far and away more personally generous than liberals).

That liberal of liberals, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, recently did so. “Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else,” he wrote on Halloween. He added that, “[Republicans are] still clearly passionate about making sure that the poor and unlucky get as little help as possible…” This is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) lies of liberalism.

In general, liberals aren’t for the poor and others in need. This may have been somewhat true of classic liberalism, but today most liberals are for those in need as long as it helps them feel good about their immoral anti-God behavior, make money, win elections, and/or remain in power (or keep other like-minded liberals in power).

So just why should we help those in need? The answer is not as obvious (to most) as it seems. First of all, the truly needy must be identified. To pad their voting rolls, liberalism has made this purposefully difficult. Of course, not all those who ask for help need it or deserve it. So what is our standard? Where do we look for moral guidance in this significant (literally to the tune of trillions of dollars) matter? The same place that we should look in all such matters: Scripture.

If you are secular minded, don’t balk. In his attempts to justify his extremely liberal Big Government agenda, Obama himself has made many appeals to the Bible (as do other like-minded liberals). In the 2008 election, when Obama was asked by pastor Rick Warren what he thought was, “the greatest moral failure of America,” Obama (almost certainly with his Big Government agenda on his mind) responded that, “I think America’s greatest moral failure in my lifetime has been that we still don’t abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me…”

When describing the “least” of us, Scripture often mentions those such as orphans, widows, and the physically impaired (lame, blind). Of course, people in those circumstances will usually be “poor.” The first laws God gave concerning those in need (in Leviticus) instructed the Israelites to refrain from “gleaning” their vineyards or reaping the corners of their fields (in other words, gathering every last morsel).

This was so that the “needy,” the “stranger,” or the “alien” would have something to harvest. Notice that even those described as needy were expected to work and gather for themselves. Those who owned the fields and vineyards were simply instructed to provide the “needy” with an opportunity.

In the New Testament, Jesus often spoke of ministering to the poor (sometimes more accurately described as “the poor in spirit”). Among other things, He instructed His followers to give to those in need without expecting anything (in this world) in return. Jesus’ ministry modeled such generosity. He went about healing those who were desperately ill, feeding the hungry, delivering the demon possessed, and even raising the dead. He told His followers to “go and do likewise.”

However, (and this is what often escapes those who attempt to justify their Big Government policies with the words and deeds of Jesus), Jesus didn’t perform acts of charity simply to fulfill some physical need a person had. Consider that the greatest miracle recorded in Scripture, performed by Christ, was raising someone from the dead. (There are three recorded instances of this occurring.) This was not done merely out of “niceness,” only to save the lives of those who had died. They would, after all (with apologies to James Bond), “die another day.” His ultimate goal was to give them “everlasting life.”

This could be said of every miracle Christ performed. It is true that He healed, fed, and cast out demons because of His great love for those in need. However, these acts alone did not save anyone. Those healed of one disease or sickness would someday die of another. Those fed would someday be hungry again. Christ’s ultimate goal was to bring people into His Kingdom. In other words, God became man not simply to help us with our troubles in this world, but to make us into new creatures.

“Niceness” and “good deeds” are excellent things. Jesus told His followers to “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16).” Inversely, as C.S. Lewis puts it, “When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world.”

Lewis continues, “We must try by every medical, educational, economic, and political means in our power, to produce a world where as many people as possible grow up ‘nice’ (performing good deeds); just as we must try to produce a world where we all have plenty to eat. But we must not suppose that even if we succeed in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world—and might even be more difficult to save.”

Thus we see, the ministry of God—feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick—can never be separated from the message of God—to repent of our sins and believe that Jesus was who He claimed to be: the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

It should also be pointed out that, in today’s American culture that is so obsessed with self, especially the sexual gratification of self, the message of “repent of your sin” must include the truth about marriage (one man for one woman for life) and the sins of homosexuality, abortion, divorce, and the like. The ministry of God and the message of God—both together complete the mission of God. And this is why a secular government can never effectively do charity.

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Beware of Scientism and the Technocrats

At the beginning of the movie “Van Helsing,” Dracula, sounding much like a faithful member of today’s left, joyfully exclaims to Dr. Frankenstein that his monster, just brought to life, is a “victory of science over God.” Writing in the UK’s Guardian, Julian Baggini declared that any religion “that seeks to explain the hows of the universe…is competing with science. In such contests science always wins, hands down, and the only way out is to claim a priority for faith over evidence, or the Bible over the lab.”

Scientist and former White House senior policy advisor Jeff Schweitzer recently declared that “Religion and science are incompatible at every level. The two seek different answers to separate questions using fundamentally and inherently incompatible methods. Nothing can truly bring the two together without sacrificing intellectual honesty.”

Renowned Darwinist Jerry Coyne, who also believes that religion and science are fundamentally incompatible, recently made the asinine and ignorant conclusion that “all the achievements of both ancient and modern science have been made by explicitly rejecting the theistic view that God has a hand in the universe, and that religion, if it ever did inspire scientific research, doesn’t do so any longer.”

The word “science” is derived from the Latin word “scientia,” meaning “knowledge.” All knowledge is derived from certain governing presuppositions. In other words, each side of every issue that human beings debate ultimately has certain un-provable assumptions upon which they must eventually rely. As the late philosopher, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, put it, “At the most fundamental level of everyone's thinking and beliefs there are primary convictions about reality, man, the world, knowledge, truth, behavior, and such things. Convictions about which all other experience is organized, interpreted, and applied.”

Likewise, theologian, author, and pastor, R.C. Sproul, recently discussed the “lasting impression” that the book, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, which he read over 50 years ago, had made upon him. He noted that the book was so influential to him because it “clearly set forth the importance of understanding that all scientific theories presuppose certain philosophical premises.”

The concept of “primary convictions” or presupposed “philosophical premises” is important when it comes to the nonsense that is religion vs. science. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive arenas where we must leave one completely behind as we cross over into the other.

Anyone can practice good science while operating from a biblical worldview (such as Pasteur, Pascal, Newton, Kepler, et al). If this is not the case, then how did Newton, considered by many the greatest scientist of all time, ever invent calculus and develop his laws of motion and universal gravitation while operating from a strict biblical worldview? Newton also calculated the age of the earth to be only a few thousand years old and declared, “For an educated man…any suggestion that the human past extended back further than 6,000 years was a vain and foolish speculation.”

If science and religion are “fundamentally incompatible,” how did Pasteur, the father of modern medicine and a firm believer in God and His Word, ever discover the principles of vaccination, fermentation, and pasteurization? If, as Coyne declares, Darwinian evolution is “biology’s greatest theory,” then why did Pasteur directly oppose Darwin and his theory, all the while conducting experiments to enhance the Law of Biogenesis?

Just as there were centuries ago, today there are scientists with a biblical worldview in every field of science. They go to school, study, graduate; they go to church, worship, pray, read (and believe) Scripture; and they go to work, conduct research, develop products, heal the sick; all the while operating completely unfettered (except by the opposition they endure from the enemies of faith) in their fields.

Likewise, some things involving matters of faith can be tested (observed, measured, and repeated). There is bountiful evidence (the field of archaeology has been a great friend to Christianity) for everything I believe about God and His creation. In other words, there is no battle between science and religion. The only competition that exists when it comes to our pursuit of knowledge and truth lies in our worldviews, or one might say, our presupposed “philosophical premises.”

Nevertheless, the idea that there is some battle between science and religion—especially Christianity—simply won’t go away. According to today's left, politicians, judges, military officers, policemen, teachers, and so forth are never to be guided by religion, but always by “science.” Thus, with their common liberal worldview (that is extremely hostile to religion—especially Christianity), we now have a disastrous marriage between the liberals who dominate “modern science” and those who dominate Big Government.

I wonder if “geniuses” such as Baggini, Schweitzer, and Coyne applied their massive intellectual powers to the merits of the disaster that is now Obamacare, or to the debate over when human life begins, or to the many dangers of homosexual behavior, or to the myth of anthropogenic global warming. Wouldn’t you want to wager that, in spite of what many see as clear moral and scientific evidence to the contrary, such “scientists” abandon almost all reason and tow the liberal line when it comes to issues such as health-care, abortion, homosexuality, marriage, guns, and “climate change”?

Writing about the “great issues” of his day, C.S. Lewis wrote in 1940, “Lord! How I loathe great issues…Could one start a Stagnation Party— which at General Elections would boast that during its term of office no event of the least importance had taken place?” Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, John G. West writes that “According to stepson David Gresham, Lewis was skeptical of politicians and not really interested in current events. His concern was not policy but principle; political problems of the day were interesting to him only insofar as they involved matters that endured.”

Nevertheless, West adds that Lewis did indeed have a “great deal” to say about politics, writing about such things as crime, obscenity, capital punishment, communism, fascism, socialism, war, the welfare state, and so on. West noted that, “It is precisely because Lewis was so uninterested in ordinary political affairs that he has so much to tell us about politics in the broad sense of the term. By avoiding the partisan strife of his own time, he was able to articulate enduring political standards for all time.”

Nowhere is this clearer, West states, than in Lewis’ writings on tyranny and morality. According to West, Lewis was particularly concerned with the tyranny that could result from the union of modern science and the modern state.

Lewis disputed the notion that we must rely on the counsel of scientists because only they have the answers to today's complicated problems. He did not dispute their knowledge, but concluded that most of it was irrelevant. In West’s words, “Political problems are preeminently moral problems, and scientists are not equipped to function as moralists.” Lewis added that, “I dread specialists in power [such as our now numerous political “czars”] because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man's opinion no added value.”

What such “specialists in power” do is give a Big Government, which is already too willing to encroach on our lives, even more of a reason for doing so. This is especially true in times of crisis. (“Never let a crisis go to waste,” right?) In such times many of us are far too eager to become what Lewis called in 1958 “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.”

Typically, in order for any oligarchy effectively to rise and rule, it needs some “extreme peril,” something to cure, some desperate need that the rulers promise to fulfill. As Lewis asked, is this not “the ideal opportunity for enslavement?”

When a generation lives in fear or dread of some looming crisis or when a society is made to believe that someone else can provide the things that it cannot live without, is this not the opportunity for those who seek to rule over us to be seen as liberators rather than the tyrants that they are? Were not Stalin and Hitler first seen as saviors and deliverers? 

Following two world wars and in the midst of a cold war, Lewis wrote that “The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance…The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good…Read Montaigne; that’s the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer?”

To “fix” our problems (whether real or perceived) and to exert the power and influence necessary, the new ruling class must more and more rely on the “experts.” This means that the politicians must increasingly rely on the knowledge and advice of scientists, until, in the end, the politicians become “merely the scientists’ puppets.”

Thus, we get the motto of the technocrats: “only science can save us now.” Whether it is global warming, stem-cell research, the beginning of life, healthcare, crime, homosexuality and marriage, or even gun control or economic policies, the technocrats have the answers. After all, as Lewis also noted, “If we are to be mothered, mother must know best.”

In other words, many of our politicians (and scientists alike) are surrendering themselves to scientism. Scientism is not science. It is an ideology that is often confused with science. It is, rather, an abuse of the scientific method and scientific authority.

Scientism can also be classified as a religion. It is a religion with many denominations: Darwinism, environmentalism, feminism, hedonism, humanism, Marxism, socialism, and so on. How many Americans now find their fulfillment and purpose in these movements? They celebrate Earth Day and Darwin Day. They boldly assert, “Science is my Savior.”

Also, scientism arrogantly attempts to lift itself above all other beliefs and disciplines—philosophy and theology included. “Philosophy is dead,” declared Stephen Hawking in his 2010 book The Grand Design. It is dead because, “Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.”

Thus, as we see, scientism seeks to elevate the methods of natural science to a level where it is the bar by which every other intellectual discipline is held. Scientism ridicules faith and religion and tells us that “God is dead.” Scientism tells us that the “debate is over,” so shut up and get in line.

And, of course, scientism leads us to technocracy. “I dread government in the name of science,” said Lewis. “That is how tyrannies come in.” What a profound conclusion! How many of us have been duped in the name of “science”? How many of us cower and yield, because, well, if the “scientists” (and then the politicians) tell us so, then it must be so?

We can see the results: generations are taught that life began without God; that the use of fossil fuels is warming the earth; that homosexuality is genetic and unchangeable; that abortion is not really the taking of a life; that marriage is whatever we want it to be; that confiscating the wealth of some to give to others is “fair;” that guns are evil; and so on. Of course, we then get laws and official government policy based on such conclusions.

Sadly, too many of us then grow accustomed to our chains. We become children, or pupils of the State (like “Julia”). We continue to elect leaders who perpetuate the cycle of the “Welfare State” based significantly on the lies of scientism. It’s time for Americans to wake up to this perversion of science and return science, faith, philosophy, and by all means, common sense, to their proper place.

(A version of this appeared in American Thinker in 2012.)

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com