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--- Wednesday, November 24, 2004
In Humble Gratitude to the God of Heaven and Earth
Psalm 100:
Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. (emphasis mine)
Thanks be to GOD
1789
General Thanksgiving
By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America A PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"
NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.
(signed) G. Washington
Thanksgiving 101
Linda Chavez says kids are cheated if they don't learn the full story of Thanksgiving in our nation's history.
No one is suggesting children should be forced to pray as part of their public school Thanksgiving celebrations, but they should not be denied learning an important lesson in American history. The founders of this nation were a deeply religious people, and Americans remain among the most religious people in the world. Religious faith has guided the development of our democracy and imbues our leaders still with a belief in the worth of every man, woman and child. When we sit down to our Thanksgiving feasts, we should remember and thank God for that.
--- Tuesday, November 23, 2004
More on Congress' 'Choice'
The New York Times also rails against the House for "rolling back women's rights" in its spending bill.
It remains to be seen exactly how the measure will work in practice. But the intention, plainly, is to curtail further already dwindling access to abortion and even to counseling that mentions abortion as a legal option. It denies federal financing to government agencies that "discriminate" against health care providers who choose for any reason to disregard state mandates to offer abortion-related services. This represents a vast expansion of the "conscience protection" that federal law currently gives to individual doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training.
The affront to women's rights, moreover, should not obscure the serious threat to the First Amendment involved in enacting what is likely to evolve into a domestic "gag rule" as, one by one, health care providers order doctors they employ not to provide patients with information about the abortion option. This echoes the way Mr. Bush reimposed a blanket Reagan-era gag rule for providers of reproductive health services abroad on his first full day in office back in 2001. It could be argued whether this provision fits best in a bill outlining government spending (though it does directly address the funding of health care). But it certainly does not represent an attack on "women's rights." If anything, it seems to be a protection of a doctor's right to have nothing to do with what he may consider to be an unconscionable act.
Congress Protects Doctors' 'Choice'
Inserted into the omnibus bill recently passed by the House of Representatives was a line meant to protect doctors from being forced into providing abortions. A fairly reasonable request, it would seem, but abortion-supporting groups are, unsurprisingly, on the defense. David Limbaugh writes that the "right to choose" all of a sudden seems to be a one-way street.
For [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi's information, Roe v. Wade had to do with the right of states to regulate abortion. It had nothing to do with forcing health care providers to perform abortions.
It's bad enough that the courts have, essentially, created a federal constitutional right to abortion in certain categories of cases for those who freely choose to engage in the procedure. But it's even worse for the government to force unwilling health care providers against their will, and oftentimes against their consciences, to engage in the abominable practice.
Besides, I thought the pro-aborts insisted on being referred to as pro-choice. But how can they maintain a shred of intellectual honesty in this matter when they want to force unwilling institutions to provide abortions? Keep in mind that for the most part we're not talking about health issues here, but elective abortions.
Darwin Beyond a Doubt
Darwinism critic Thomas Woodward skewers a recent National Geographic cover story that portends to submit the question, "Was Darwin Wrong?"
Readers were jolted around the world that such a question should leap from the cover of National Geographic. Hopes surged for a few seconds among skeptics of evolution, until they turned to David Quammen's article, which answers with a loud, triumphal "No!" Quammen's piece unfolds as a glittering showcase for Darwinism, a reassuring mini-museum in print. Ten pages of text--more in the genre of high school cheerleading than sober analysis--are embedded in a lush gallery of 22 pages of glossy pictures, including an amazing array of nine separate "sidebar" mini-articles.
If we imagine the "clash of two theories"--the older notion of "separate creations" by a supremely wise designer, versus Darwin's "common ancestry" of all life, driven by natural selection--it appears here that the younger system has utterly crushed the older. Sketched in terms of a basketball tourney, Quammen paints a complete rout--a 118-0 shutout. I haven't read the article yet, though I have seen it advertised in the National Geographic Washington headquarters, which I walk by about every day. I'll admit that I, too, held out some hope that the magazine would give a thorough and objective look to the problems with Darwinian evolution, but Woodward at least seems convinced that wasn't the case. This can't be terribly surprising, especially in light of the polls I noted earlier suggesting that the public isn't quite offering unanimous support for the evolutionary theory. We would be led to believe that this disconnect comes because of an wide gap between "science" and "religion," but it's really a search to separate what is true from what is false. And for whatever reason, Darwinism cannot convince the better part of the populace (including many in the scientific community) that evolution holds the key to the truth of our origins.
Silent Majority Speaks Again
Despite evolutionary biology's near sacred place in the world of academia, a vast majority of Americans still aren't ready to remove God's hand from the origin of life. A CBS News poll reports that 55 percent of people believe that God created humankind in its current form, and an even larger number want that view presented in the public schools alongside evolution. And lest one is tempted to paint this as yet another symptom of the naivete of red-state voters, nearly half of Kerry supporters also claimed to believe in humanity's supernatural origin.
Re: Thanks Be to Whom?
The intolerant president Abraham Lincoln apparently missed that memo when he declared the current Thanksgiving holiday by noting, "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy."
Maryland School Administrators Take God out of History
Public school children across the state of Maryland are learning all about celebrating a politically correct Thanksgiving this week. Even though thanks to the Almighty God was a major part of the pilgrims' Thanksgiving feast centuries ago, state administrators in Maryland have decided to leave that part of history out of the school system. From Fox News:
Maryland public school students are free to thank anyone they want while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving - as long as it's not God.
"We teach about Thanksgiving from a purely historical perspective, not from a religious perspective," said Charles Ridgell, St. Mary's County Public Schools curriculum and instruction director.
School administrators statewide agree, saying religion never coincides with how they teach Thanksgiving to students.
The claim that not teaching about thanks to God is helping to teach a "purely historical perspective" is false. A historical perspective would include teaching the children the pilgrims thanked God, because that is what happened. It is not something that was added by some crazy right-wing conservative Christians just so they could somehow find a way for God to be mentioned in the classroom. The pilgrims believed in God and were thankful to Him for the blessings He bestowed upon them. What a concept.
Teaching about a secular Thanksgiving counters the holiday's original premise as stated by George Washington in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation: "It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor."
Such omissions also deny the Pilgrims' religious fervor in the celebration of Thanksgiving, as related by Harry Hornblower, an archaeologist who spent years researching the history of the holiday.
According to the Web site Plimoth.org, dedicated to Hornblower's research, the Pilgrims "fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean."
Thanksgiving, the site said, derived from their belief that "a series of misfortunes meant that God was displeased, and the people should both search for the cause and humble themselves before him. Good fortune, on the other hand, was a sign of God's mercy and compassion, and therefore he should be thanked and praised."
But researchers like Hornblower aren't mentioned in classrooms. "We don't focus on religion, because it is not a part of our curriculum," said Sandra Grulich, Cecil County Schools' elementary school curriculum coordinator.
Opponents of censorship worry that by omitting such religious material from lesson plans, educators are compromising their students' education.
Amen.
--- Monday, November 22, 2004
Values Voting with the Remote
Perhaps in an attempt to de-mystify the conservative values of the red state voters, The New York Times suggests a disconnect between those moral convictions and the popularity of television shows like "Desperate Housewives."
The results of the presidential election are still being parsed for what they say about the electorate's supposed closer embrace of traditional cultural values, but for the network television executives charged with finding programs that speak to tastes across the nation, one lesson is clear.
The supposed cultural divide is more like a cultural mind meld....
So if it is true that the public's electoral choices are a cry for more morally driven programming, the network executives ask, why are so many people, even in the markets surrounding the Bush bastions Atlanta and Salt Lake City, watching a sex-drenched television drama? Thick as we are, red staters certainly are capable of distinguishing between on-screen entertainment and real-life moral failings. Still, is the Times right to chide those who defend moral values while watching entertainment that denigrates them? To the extent that this contradiction exists, it cannot help the conservative message. I haven't seen ABC's "Desperate Housewives," but it seems to accomplish, if nothing else, the glorification of infidelity. How can we expect to effectively promote the sanctity and sacredness of marriage if we're talking about which "desperate wife" slept with whom at the water cooler on Monday? I don't claim to be blameless in entertainment choices either (and I'd guess that few of us are), and we don't need to reject every "secular" piece of art. But I fear that if we cannot separate the wheat from the chaff and reject immorality in entertainment form, then we will not be taken seriously in encouraging the culture to conform to the highest moral standards.
A Time to Hate?
Jeff Jacoby continues an interesting discussion following his unremorseful comments after Yasser Arafat's death. Jacoby submits the question, Is it always a sin to hate a fellow man?
Jewish tradition holds, with Ecclesiastes, that there is a time to love *and* a time to hate. The Hebrew Bible enjoins us to love our neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and to love the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:19), but that love has its limits. We are not expected to love savage thugs or to ask God's mercy on them. On the contrary, we loathe the unrepentantly cruel because we believe God loathes them too.
It defies reason and upends morality to claim that God loves both Saddam Hussein and the innocent Kurds he gassed to death -- that He bestows His love on Osama bin Laden no less than on the 3,000 souls he butchered on 9/11. Of course we should pray that an evildoer will realize the awfulness of his ways and atone for his crimes. But to love him even if he doesn't? To bless him when he dies? God forbid! To bless the Hitlers and the Arafats of this world is to betray their victims. That we must never do. I will admit that I have no real answers to such a debate. Certainly, God desires for every member of mankind to submit himself to the Lord's authority. Just as certainly, some (perhaps most) reject the sovereignty of their Creator and follow their own wiles. But as a fallen human, is it ever appropriate to hate those who commit the most aggregious of acts of murder or rape? I'm not sure. Hatred, though, would seem to represent the antithesis of love. As such, real hatred (like real love) is more than just a brief spate of emotion in a passionate moment, but rather it is an act of will sustained deliberately.
To be sure, the love of God is far beyond what the human mind is capable of conceiving. I suspect His hatred of evil is equally incomprehensible. But it is difficult to grasp where the target of that hatred seeps from wickedness to the wicked people who precipitate them. Scripture seems to advocate both a proper "time to hate" as well as its disconnect to God's design. David says in Psalm 139, "Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies."
Yet the Apostle John, of course, admonishes that, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"
This idea is present in the Old Testament as well, including in Leviticus and Proverbs (though adding that "the fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate."
Strangely enough, in a relativistic postmodern society, hatred could never be justified because no action or idea could ever be firmly be labeled as evil. Yet God does distinguish between righteousness and iniquity, and His people are called to do the same. As such, I think there can be reason to harbor hatred toward the most sinister and unrepenting among us. However, even if that is the case, we must be careful not to overstep the Lord's role as ultimate Judge and Keeper of souls.
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