Bill's Comments

I am often surprised when watching events unfold, that when my belief that justice ultimately comes is validated, it is often both far more subtle and far harsher than I could have imagined. I have a particular instance in mind that prompted this post.

I recently finished the book, "The Christian Myth," by Burton L. Mack. Dr. Mack is a Professor Emeritis at Claremont School of Theology in California. In this book, which is the third of Dr. Mack's books that I have read, Dr. Mack explicitly states that he considers Christianity to be the cause of many ills and that it needs to be replaced. He also implies that concepts of God are simply a generalization of ancestor worship (p. 99). In effect, Dr Mack has used his position at Claremont to develop an anti-Christian doctrine and agenda based on a hypothetical document called the "Gospel of Q." [I plan to post on this topic almost immediately as well] In my research on Q, I found an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1996, "The Search for a No-Frills Jesus." The quotes from Dr. Mack in this article are illuminating:

"It should bring an end to the myth, the history, the mentality, of the Gospels. But nobody's going to want to read it!"..."They'll have to read it!"..."It's over," ... "We've had enough apocalypses. We've had enough martyrs. Christianity has had a two-thousand-year run, and it's over."

This was written thirteen years ago. Dr. Mack's work is an impassioned attempt to overthrow established Christianity. It represents an entire career of scholarship, albeit based primarily on the works of two other scholars.

From the considerable reading and research I am currently conducting, Dr. Mack is not even mentioned in most of it, and there are a few good scholars that contradict, not support him. The strongest evidence against Q, the basis of Dr. Mack's career, is from Eta Linnenberg, who performed a careful statistical analysis of the supposed equivalences and found them far less persuasive numerically than they are claimed.

For a man with the desire to upset the universe, or at least all of Christendom, to be relegated to oblivion is far more punishing than to be given a major confrontation and defeat in public. One can almost feel sorry for him. Had he made the decision to stay with his scholarship and not try to make it serve social-political activism, the outcome might have been quite different.

This essay in the WSJ Opinion Journal is brilliant. It captures the contrast, between what the President and the liberals are doing to our culture and what we once were, better than anything else I have read on automobiles and the coming auto regulations.

....and they are about to end.

"There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.... In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right...."
--James Madison, letter to James Monroe, October 5, 1786

.........as the government takes over.

I am learning why many scholars seem to be somewhat disconnected from the world around them. It is a matter of time. It requires a lot of energy and time to properly pursue a course of study, so much so that the time left for social activities such as correspondence, blogging, keeping up with current events, etc. becomes limited.

I have, in the past, avidly perused about 20 blogs a day, often leaving comments, plus several news sources. I now visit a few blogs weekly and hit two or three news sources, daily. It is simply because the time is not there. I have embarked on a major project that requires "drinking from a fire hose" in study and reading. I must still earn a living, so hours become limited outside of the necessities.

In effect, I have less connectedness to the world.

I am currently engaged in an intense study of the foundations of Christianity in preparation for writing a book in a year or two (which will probably require an additional year or two). It has just crossed my mind that there is a fundamental issue that is often ignored when Christians, and especially mainline Protestant church leadership fails to see or consider when promulgating government participation in social programs.

Jesus urged taking care of the disadvantaged individually and voluntarily. Government programs take care of the disadvantaged by the use of coercion to obtain the means, and implied coercion in their distribution.

The causes of this confusion are related to the same issues that create a tension in Jesus teachings on the Law. There are fundamental requirements and there are behavioral requirements. Jesus emphasized the fundamental and relaxed the behavioral. At the time the focus was on the behavioral, e.g., the Pharisee examples. We are caught up in the same issue today--that somehow there is virtue in "helping" regardless of means. Never mind that virtue obtains only with free choice to exercise it.

There are pastors that have written books justifying liberalism in government using Christian doctrine. I suspect that somewhere down the line a proper approach, either via a major essay or set of essays, or a book will be needed (actually is needed now). The major theme would be something I preached on a few years ago--Render unto Caesar that which is Caeser's, and render unto God that which is God's. Or as I put it for the sermon: Don't render unto Caesar that which is God's, and don't render unto God that which is Caesar's.