Author Archives: Rob Harrison

Could the political pot boil over?

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I haven’t posted on Yuval Levin’s essay on “The Meaning of Sarah Palin,” in part because for all the things he gets right, he makes one critical error:  he mistakes Gov. Palin as “handled” and portrayed by the McCain campaign for Gov. Palin as she actually is.  He thus ends up blaming her for failing to do things which in fact she was prevented from doing (or attempting to do, at any rate) by folks like Nicolle Wallace.  I was, however, quite interested by William Jacobson’s comment on Levin’s article:

The politics in this country is like a simmering pot. The boiling water represents the desire of people to be left alone and to make their own way in life. The cover on the pot is the set of liberal assumptions which tells people that they have no right to lead life the way they want, and that those who have assumed the reigns of power know better. My sense is that the tighter that lid is pressed—by attacking people like Sarah Palin, by forcing government into every aspect of our lives, by appointing people like Tom Daschle who have milked the system dry—the more likely it is the pot will boil over.

The one point where I would disagree with him, regretfully, is that I don’t think we can simply call those assumptions “liberal”; functionally speaking, the GOP has operated in much the same fashion over the last number of years—which is probably why the last two elections have pretty well blown the party out of the water.  (Plus, of course, while conservatism explicitly disavows the idea that “those who have assumed the reigns of power know better,” our liberal critics would accuse conservatives of being those who “tell people that they have no right to lead life the way they want,” and there are certain areas in which they have a case; only the purest of libertarians could really duck such a charge completely.)  Taken as a whole, though, I think Dr. Jacobson is on to something; if he is, we might have another Jacksonian revolution coming.  (This time with a woman of the frontier in the lead, mayhap?)

Do what to one another?

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I was scrolling down on the Rev. Dr. Ray Ortlund’s blog to rewatch the video of Aretha Franklin singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the inauguration (easier than looking it up on YouTube), when this post of his from the same day, which I’d missed, caught my eye; it’s titled “‘One anothers’ I can’t find in the New Testament”:

Humble one another, scrutinize one another, pressure one another, embarrass one another, correct one another, corner one another, interrupt one another, run one another’s lives, confess one another’s sins, disapprove of one another . . . .”Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32

Dr. Ortlund, if your aim’s as good with a deer rifle as it is with a blog post, I can’t imagine it takes you long to fill your quota every year.  There actually are biblical senses in which “correct one another” (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and “confess one another’s sins” (Daniel 9) may be appropriate, but in general . . . yeah.

Calling the (blog)roll

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I’ve been thinking for a while now that I needed to add Conservatives4Palin to the blogroll; and then, off their blogroll, I discovered the blog Caffeinated Thoughts, which looks to be doing the same sorts of things I’m trying to do here, and figured I needed to put that one on as well.  From there, I wandered over to Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, the blog of a conservative Cornell law professor (and contributor to American Thinker), and decided the list was up to three.When Shane Vander Hart (and how on earth is a pastor with a name that Dutch not in the RCA, anyway?) of Caffeinated Thoughts mentioned the Conservative Web Brigade, I thought I’d check it out; having done so, I asked permission to come aboard, and they were generous enough to grant it.  As a consequence, the CWB now has its own section in the blogroll.  I’ve also rearranged everything else a little, moving conservative political bloggers into a separate section (or two, really, since the CWB blogroll is a distinct section) and moving the primarily theological bloggers up.  I’ve also moved the Anchoress and the Baseball Crank into the political-blogs section—for both, politics is only one of their concerns, but it’s sufficiently predominant that that seems to be the more fitting category for them.

The Pharisees, the grace of God, and the mission of the church

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I noted yesterday that Jesus judged the Pharisees for their self-idolatry and their worship of their own worship, because their focus had shifted from glorifying God to glorifying themselves.  It’s worth noting as well, though, something that’s closely tied to that (and that also ties back to Isaiah’s critique of Israel, on which Jesus draws in John 9):  namely, they had committed their own version of blind Israel’s other biggest sin (besides idolatry).  Just as Israel had looked down on the nations as enemies, rather than seeing them as their mission field, so the Pharisees looked down on non-Pharisees as inferiors, people to avoid rather than people to bless. One of the things they objected to about Jesus, remember, was that he hung out with lowlifes and sinners, whom they themselves despised and hated. In this, too, their essential blindness was revealed, because it showed that their true focus wasn’t on God; they couldn’t see that the “people of the land” whom they loathed, the nations whom they regarded as enemies, were the people God loved and wanted to redeem, just as much as he loved and wanted to redeem them. They were, ultimately, all about themselves, and that’s not what God is on about, or wants us to be on about.The reason, I think, is that the Pharisees had lost sight of the fact that their relationship with God was all about grace, not about their own effort—and make no mistake, they should have known that; we often miss it, too, but the Old Testament really is just as much about the grace of God as the New Testament. That’s why Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, not its replacement. They had lost sight of the fact that even for all the work they put in, they didn’t deserve God’s favor any more than the tax collectors, prostitutes, and foreigners they held in such contempt, and so they failed to understand that their proper response to God and his grace was not to keep it to themselves but to share it. They failed to understand that God calls his people to mission—to the mission of the Servant, to be agents of grace for the world.

This is Obama’s America

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When the abortionist didn’t show up in time, a Florida baby was thrown out with the trash.After all, what can you expect when we have a president who can call a baby a punishment?  This is what he voted for.I can’t even bear to copy this—just go read it.  Other links are here, on R. S. McCain’s blog; and as Jared Wilson rightly says,

If you’re pro-choice or a pro-lifer who’s not all that concerned about a pro-choice culture and this disturbs you, why?The only difference between this incident and what happens in all abortions is that the baby is usually killed inside the womb. They just didn’t do it in a timely fashion this time.Either way, a baby is killed and thrown away like garbage.Stories like this and the advances in pre-natal technology are catching up with the abortion industry. One of these days we will wake up to how barbaric abortion is. We’ll suddenly realize how uncivilized we really are.

A thought or two in response to Culture11

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There’s been a fair bit of chatter recently in certain conservative circles about the demise of the website Culture11. I have to be honest, I read this with a certain amount of bemusement, since (as Mencken might have put it) I must confess I never knew Lord Jones was alive to begin with; I’m not sure if that makes me un-hip, or what—but then, as a mainline pastor in small-town north-central Indiana, I’m probably un-hip by definition anyway, so I’m not too worried.In any case, I’ll confess that what strikes me about the conversation over the demise of this website is all the heavy breathing over the word “conservative.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to get all bent out of shape over the use of labels; they’re useful shorthand. I’m perfectly content to be called a conservative, because in this context, that’s the label generally used for people who believe what I believe; if “liberal” still carried its classical meaning, I’d be perfectly content to be called that, too. It saves lengthy explanations, and that’s useful.
The conversation over Culture11, though, has a different quality, with lots of talk about the “alternative right,” what it means to be a “true conservative,” the deriding of “neocon echo chambers” and the like.  What I see here, besides infighting and back-stabbing, is a concern for the label as such, and an almost Jacobin impulse to ideological purity—manifested, since the guillotine isn’t actually an option, by loud declarations of excommunication of the heretics.  I see, quite frankly, a great deal of narrowness of perspective, marked by chronological snobbery (“that’s so 2001-04”) and snobbery of provenance (if it comes from Person X, or Group X—such as “the 2nd and 3rd generation neocons who rule the roost on FOX,” who are “bereft of all discernible signs of culture”—then it must be bad), and a vast ugliness of attitude.  There’s precious little grace shown here toward those with whom people disagree, only the attitude that “if you aren’t my definition of conservative, then you’re the enemy just like everyone else.”Now, granted, none of these folks know me from a hole in the ground (I think I commented on Joe Carter’s blog once or twice, but that’s about it), so my reaction to this spat doesn’t really matter any; but I know what I’d say to these folks if I could, or to anyone else who finds themselves arguing in this sort of spirit.Grow up. Search for truth as best you can, come to the best conclusions you can reach, and don’t worry about who else holds them, or whether they’re sufficiently contemporary, or any of that junk. That kind of thing is, to be blunt, juvenile.  Argue your positions with respect for those who disagree, and with openness to learn from them—and remember that politics and culture are pragmatic arenas, and that to get anything done, you have to build alliances and forge coalitions; hyper-puritanism leads finally to self-isolation, and the only door out of that trap is the abandonment of all the principles for which you fought in the first place.  Don’t pronounce anathemas on those who agree with you on most things—that, too, is juvenile; find common ground, and work with them.  Remember, you too are imperfect; that’s why we all need grace.

The gang that couldn’t govern straight

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Never put yourself in a position where your party wins only if your country fails.
—Thomas Friedman
It hasn’t been a good start for the new administration.  In the first couple weeks, we’ve seen them announce standards and then not keep them; we’ve seen two of Barack Obama’s nominees withdraw for legal and ethical reasons (following another nominee who had previously done so, and yet another who should have); we’ve seen the House Democrats running the show on his first big piece of legislation, which consequently has turned into a legislative albatross; we’ve seen him back down on some aspects of that legislation after some complaints from our allies; we’ve seen the response to the big ice storm botched; we’ve seen the appointment of a new ambassador to Iraq botched (which is not to say that Gen. Anthony Zinni would have been a better choice than Christopher Hill—I have no reason to think he would have been—but rather that offering a guy a job, thanking him for accepting it, telling him to get ready to go to work, and then actually hiring someone else behind his back without letting him know you’ve done it is no way to run a railroad); we’ve seen Iran rattling sabers, apparently emboldened by the President’s comments; and unfortunately, we’ve seen all this addressed by a McClellan-esque disaster of a press secretary who isn’t helping his administration at all.  Only two weeks in, and some people are already deeply worried, while others are asking, “Who is Barack Obama?” and others yet are beginning to think that the administration is “on the verge of combining the competency of Carter and the ethics of Nixon.”For my part, I don’t think the most pessimistic talk is warranted—yet.  Granted, no recent administration has gotten off to this bumpy a start, but false starts and missteps aren’t uncommon for new administrations; after all, you can’t really rehearse this.  (Compare this article on the beginning of the Bush 43 administration, which managed the transition much better than the Obama administration has so far—courtesy of Dick Cheney, who had already seen it all and done most of it—but had some similar legislative splats.)  These are bright people, and it’s perfectly reasonable to hope and expect that they’ll figure out what they need to figure out, and do a better job of managing the job as time goes on.  On the other hand, we’ve seen a few troubling trends from the campaign repeating themselves in the early days of the administration, most notably President Obama’s tendency to duck unpleasant conversations—not telling Tom Daschle to withdraw his nomination, not telling Gen. Zinni he wasn’t getting the job after all, not going to Kentucky, not answering questions on William Lynn, and so on.  As such, there’s reason for concern that some of these problems may persist, and that the comparisons to President Carter may ultimately prove out.  That would be a bad thing for the country; and so, as a believer in Thomas Friedman’s dictum, I will be (along with many others I know) praying it doesn’t happen.

The blindness of self-worship

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Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have
no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.—John 9:39-41 (ESV)There are a lot of folks who have trouble with these verses.  For some, it’s a matter of not understanding Jesus’ rabbinic way of talking; I actually had an elder use this as an example of her contention that “there are lots of contradictions in the Bible.”  Others, more seriously, wonder why Jesus says here, “For judgment I came into the world,” when he told Nicodemus in John 3, “The Son of Man did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to seek and save those who are lost.”  The answer is that this isn’t a statement of what Jesus wanted to happen, but simply what he knew would happen; there are those who, in the face of God’s offer of salvation, do not want it.  They would prefer to hold fast to their idols, to gods of their own invention, which they can control.  They refuse to believe they need Jesus—they think they can see just fine without him, thanks—and in their refusal, their true blindness is revealed and confirmed.  It isn’t that Jesus judges them, but that in response to his coming, they judge themselves.Now, Jesus is drawing this language from Isaiah, who repeatedly associates blindness and deafness with the worship of idols instead of the one true God—idols being blind and deaf lumps of inert material, those who worship them become as blind and deaf as the false gods before whom they bow; and the interesting thing about this when it comes to the Pharisees is that they weren’t blind in the same way as the people Isaiah was talking about—or at least, they would have said they weren’t.  They knew the prophet’s complaint about the people of his time; they knew the dangers of idolatry, of worshiping the gods of the nations, and they were devoutly opposed to that. Their whole effort, their whole reason for existence, was focused on worshiping God faithfully and keeping his law as well as they possibly could.  They no doubt saw themselves as the exact opposite of the blind and deaf Israel against which the prophet spoke.  And yet Jesus makes the same charge against them:  they are willfully blind.The biggest reason for this is that they were no longer truly worshiping God, for they had made an idol of their own religion; their focus had shifted from worshiping God and giving him glory to worshiping their own purity and glorifying themselves.  They were worshiping their own worship, and their true god was their idea of their own wonderfulness.  While they would no doubt have balked at 7 Simple Steps to Your Best Life Now, the spirit of their religion was really very similar to that sort of American self-help/therapeutic religion, just as it’s very similar to the idolatry of style, taste and preference practiced in so many of our congregations that underlies American Christianity’s “worship wars.”  Our worship is supposed to be our gift to God and the window through which we look at him; they had stopped looking through the window and started looking at it, shifting their focus from the Giver to the gift.  Too often, if we’re honest, I think we’d have to admit that we do the same.

The careless grace of God

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Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold
and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God,
but for those outside everything is in parables, so thatthey may indeed see but not perceive,
and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven.And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”—Mark 4:1-20 (ESV)

Craig Barnes, “Careless Grace”


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Craig Barnes is one of my favorite preachers, and I was glad to see that he would be preaching and teaching at this year’s Worship Symposium; I’ve already referenced the workshop of his which I attended, and I’ll be commenting on that at greater length soon (I’d meant to do so already), because he had some very important things to say.  I didn’t attend his seminar, but I was there for the opening service on Thursday morning, structured around the Parable of the Sower, at which he preached.  This is a great and deep parable, but it seems to attract bad sermons; thankfully (if unsurprisingly), the Rev. Dr. Barnes’ message wasn’t one of them.  Indeed, it’s a marvelous meditation on God’s extravagant grace, and on our proper response:  listen, wait, and see.  It’s well worth your time.