Alex Chediak | Archive | August, 2006

Archive - August, 2006

Next Step with Iran: Stiff Sanctions

August 22 was a deadline set for Iran to respond the U.N. Security Council. On the day of the deadline, Iran provided a proposal to European diplomats which the Iranians claimed cited “positive and clear signals.” The Bush Administration said it is still studying the Iranian proposal but that the reply of the Iranians “falls short of the conditions set by the Security Council…..which require the full and verifiable suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.”
Here is a great explanation of why “the obvious next diplomatic step is to show Iran that the world meant what it said by following through with the toughest achievable sanctions.”

August 24, 2006 in Culture | Comment

Heroes and Villains – and Pirates II (Dead Man’s Chest)

Al Mohler cites Dorothea Israel Wolfson’s observation that “the distinction between heroes and villains is often blurred” in today’s children’s literature. Mohler notes that such a reality is reflective of the new postmodern ethos.
(HT: Tim Challies)
In a different context, my wife and I felt that the lines between good and evil were particularly blurred as we viewed Pirates of the Caribbean II: Dead Man’s Chest. Though the movie had some fun action scenes, the entire plot seemed frustratingly incoherent in that Jack Sparrow, set forth as a hero in the last film (though a pirate) lacks the basic decency of Will Turner. Nevertheless, Turner somehow pledges undying allegiance to Sparrow. Trying to discern the motivation of the characters (including Elizabeth Swann) at the end of the film was particularly confusing.
So reading Mohler’s post reminded me of this unpleasant movie-watching experience. Dead Man’s Chest is not worth seeing, in my opinion. Care to disagree?

August 23, 2006 in Culture | Comment

The Degradation of Today’s Teen Music

Joe Carter points out a dangerous decline in the lyrics of teen music today. (Note: Though the descriptive language employed is not gratuitous, this sober assessment may not be appropriate for children.)
(HT: Tim Challies)

August 23, 2006 in Culture, Practical Ministry | Comment

Christian Rap and Curtis “Voice” Allen

I would agree with those who believe in the moral neutrality of musical genres. God or the devil can be glorified by classical music, depending on whether it is produced and enjoyed by hearts that prize God or hearts that prize human achievement or self-reliance. And although much of the rap music culture is filled with sex and violence, the musical style itself does not necessarily engender such sinful expression. I once read an outstanding article on this subject by Dr. Harold Best, Dean of the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music. It described how a man ran out of a church service after hearing the prelude of the organist. He ran out because that was the exact piece of music used in a satanic ritual of which he took part prior to being marvelous won to Christ. The music? A piece of classical music by J.S. Bach (a Christian). I forgot the details of the article, but I never forgot the point. A style of music that feels worshipful to me may not necessarily encourage or edify another person. I am told that Dr. Best discusses this in his book Music Through the Eyes of Faith. (Note: This does not mean that all songs are created equal. God-centered, theologically-rich lyrics and quality within a musical genre are both important, in my opinion.)
With that as introduction, I want to join those who are commending the music of Curtis Allen, who goes by the name Voice. I have really enjoyed listening to his CD Progression. His songs are theologically rich and have catchy phrases and beats — even for someone like me, who really never enjoyed rap music. Curtis describes his project Progression in this way:
Progression is an album that I wanted to make that I considered to be a “Very Human” album. Sometimes Christian music can lack the everyday struggle of the Christian or can easily gloss over the problem and go right to the solution, but that is not always the case in real life situations. Sometimes we doubt God’s Sovereignty, and I wanted to capture that on the album. It has 14 songs, and the album progresses. So it starts off with faith in Christ and excitement in being like him in the world. Then after a few songs you get to a bit of unbelief and complaints about the very thing you were celebrating in the first few songs. Then in “Contemporary Job,” like the book of Job, God addresses those complaints with His perspective. After that the Christian is refreshed and is ready to again fight sin in “Divide and Conquer” and so forth. So I see Progression as the Christian life in many ways. We all face doubts and encouragement and I wanted to have that element on Progression. (in an interview with Justin Taylor, posted here)
I commend Curtis Allen’s project Progression to you for the edification, relaxation, and worship it can stimulate in your heart.

August 21, 2006 in Culture, Practical Ministry, Theology | 2 Comments

Another President Clinton?

Time Magazine looks at the behind-the-scenes campaign that Senator Hillary Clinton is already mounting for the White House. Could she win? May it never be.

August 21, 2006 in Culture | Comment

Welfare Reform – 10 year anniversary

On the ten-year anniversary of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, passed by a Republican-led Congress and enacted by President Bill Clinton, Rich Lowry notes reasons to celebrate, while Douglas J. Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute sounds a more cautionary note, pointing to the need for further improvement.
(HT: Justin Taylor)

August 20, 2006 in Culture | Comment

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, formerly a member of the Dutch parliament, and writer of the controversial film Submission, is now with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington, D.C. Her 12-minute film powerfully examines domestic violence in Islamic households. Ali was a guest on CBS 60 minutes this evening.
Ali has written a book entitled The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam in which she examines the question of “whether the roots of evil [referring to the 9/11 attacks] can be traced to the faith I grew up with: was the aggression, the hatred inherent in Islam itself?”
Her story is interesting given the irony of a former representative of a very “liberal” country now working for a “conservative” organization. It is also a noteworthy contrast between depictions of women’s worth and dignity in the Koran versus the Bible (not that Ali is a Christian, to the best of my knowledge).

August 20, 2006 in Uncategorized | Comment

Mainstream media – Fair and Balanced?

Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, has written an incisive, penetrating essay called Is the Mainstream Media Fair and Balanced? in the August, 2006 issue of Imprimis, a monthly digest of Hillsdale College. His thesis:
My topic today is how the mainstream media—meaning nationally influential newspapers like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today; influential regional papers like the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times; the broadcast networks and cable news stations like CNN; and the wire services, which now are pretty much reduced to the Associated Press—stacks up in terms of the latter two journalistic standards, fairness and balance. In my opinion, they don’t stack up very well.
Barnes observes that “Polls of the Washington press corps….about who they voted for in 2004 always show that nine-to-one or ten-to-one of them voted Democratic.”
Though there are many fine conservative journalists, they are almost never hired by the mainstream media (MSM). There are many more liberal commentators on FOX than conservatives on other stations, Barnes notes. The result is that “only the mainstream media still has the power to make stories big.” Barnes recounts the Cindy Sheehan story last summer as an example. The story was huge in the MSM, even though Sheehan assigned credibility to the Iraqi insurgency by naming those maiming, beheading, and killing innocent civilians as “freedom fighters.”
A more recent example is the coverage of the NSA surveillance leak story. Rather than expressing concern over the breach of confidentiality and the potential impact on national security (which is all they say about the Valerie Plame issue), the media mischaracterizes the story as a “domestic spying scandal.” Nevermind that those being spied on are Al-Qaeda members overseas using the telephone to speak to people in the U.S.
When liberals express outrage, they are “criticizing.” However, in the Clinton era, his critics were demonized as “Clinton haters.” Though there were certainly Clinton haters on the fringe right, the point remains that nobody today is ever labelled a “Bush hater,” even though that is clearly what some folks are.
Barnes goes on to examine religious and partisan bias. Bush is considered “extremely religious” because he reads his Bible daily and prays. Nevermind the fact that millions of Americans also do that. Meanwhile Paul Kengor found that President Clinton quoted the Bible and mentioned God and Jesus Christ more than President Bush, who (in public discourse) says relatively little about his faith. Kengor discusses this and more in his book God and George W. Bush: A Spiritual Life.
With regard to partisan bias, Barnes notes that Robert Lichter (President of the Center for Media and Public Affairs) found that no presidential candidate has received more favorable treatment from the broadcast media than John Kerry (over the course of Lichter’s 20 years of experience in accessing broadcast news for bias). Kerry received 77 percent favorable coverage in the stories regarding him on the three broadcast news shows. For Bush, it was 34 percent. Two noteworthy examples are the lack of coverage of the Swift Boat vets (uncovering faulty claims to Vietnam war heroism on Kerry’s part) and Dan Rather’s flawed report on President Bush’s (supposed) preferential treatment in the Texas National Guard.
Barnes’s essay, in its entirity, is well worth the read.

August 19, 2006 in Culture | Comment

Andreas Köstenberger on the gift of singleness

Dr. Andreas Kostenberger weighs in on the gift of singleness. He offers a somewhat more nuanced view on the gift, particularly the benefits of singleness for the kingdom of God, than he attributes to Debbie Maken.
Though I’ve read articles by Debbie Maken and reviews of her book, I regret that I have not yet had a chance to read the entire book. My wife Marni did read it cover-to-cover. Perhaps Marni or Mrs. Maken herself would like to comment? (Our family is moving next month, so Marni probably won’t have time!)
My blog post below is an introduction to Maken’s overarching thesis. It is not an exhaustive examination of every issue in her book.
(HT: Justin Taylor)

August 19, 2006 in Culture, Practical Ministry, With One Voice | 4 Comments

Getting Serious about Getting Married

Debbie Maken has written a book called Getting Serious about Getting Married. It is a strong critical response to the somewhat widespread view that to be single is to have “the gift of singleness.”
Many in the church advise singles to merely be content with their singleness. “Just think how effective you can be in serving Christ because you aren’t distracted by a husband and children!” “Just be content; Jesus is all you need.” “It’s God’s will for you to be single now; maybe He has some lessons He wants you to learn, first.”
Such thoughts have the appearance of wisdom, because we know that (on one level) everything that comes to pass is God’s will (in the sense that He decrees it, Eph. 1:11). But God also has revealed to us His moral will in His word: things He wants us to do, things that please Him. Like believing in Jesus for salvation. Like loving our neighbor as ourself. Like relieving the suffering of others. And like “it is not good for man to be alone.”
God requires all singles to be celibate (to abstain from sexual expression in thought and deed), but because most singles aren’t gifted for celibacy, most should seek to marry. I agree with Maken, Al Mohler, and others in the view that the Bible does not describe a gift of singleness per se, but rather a gift of celibacy. The gift of celibacy is a rare gift that is accompanied by a Spirit-endowed ability to cheerfully and without bitterness or rancor abstain from sexual intimacy and the deep emotional companionship that only comes with marriage and having children. In many cases, I believe this is accompanied with a particular life calling that greatly profits from the status of singleness (e.g., missions, a life-threatening vocation, excessive traveling, etc.). I have written on the biblical normality of marriage for adults in chapter 2 of my book With One Voice, which Christian Focus has generously allowed me to post here.
My wife and I were (for the most part) not raised with convictions about the rarity of the gift of celibacy and the normality of marriage. Since the book’s author is female, I asked my wife Marni if she’d be willing to read Maken’s book and post some thoughts for us here. Marni writes:
“Like Maken, I also spent my twenties single, longing to be married. I read the book thinking of my situation, as well as of my single girlfriends. And I found myself saying “right on!” throughout the book, wishing I had had this book when I was 23. The book is a breath of fresh air; she makes a compelling argument that single women are not desperate, unusual, or sinful for having a desire to be married. In fact, she makes the case that biblically and all through Christian history, early marriage has been not only the norm but is God’s will. Instead of chastising women for not being content enough or not focusing on serving God with the luxury of time afforded by their freedom from care of a husband and children, she validates the desire to be married as just as normal as hunger for food.
There is such tremendous pressure in the church and in the Christian culture today to embrace singleness as a “gift,” based on Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7. But Maken is condemning of the perspective that singleness is equal to the rare “gift of celibacy,” which is truly for those who do not desire to marry and are called to a specific, unusual calling that would be incompatible with a family. While Maken’s exegesis of 1 Corinthians 7 and Jesus’ words in Matthew 19 is a bit weak, her conclusions are nonetheless compelling.
I very much appreciated her encouragement to single women to use their discontent as a God-given impetus to get married, rather than to suppress it in an unfounded attempt to be “more godly” in the hopes that once the desire for marriage is gone and a certain advanced level of sanctification is reached, then God will magically cause her to get married. I remember being terrified to admit to anyone in the church that I wasn’t content in my singleness. I knew I would be perceived as weak, ungodly, and desperate. I hope all pastors and elders will read this book and begin to encourage singles based on God’s clear will for the normalcy of marriage, and not try to biblically justify the prevalence of delayed marriage induced by sin.”
I want to join my wife in commending Debbie Maken’s Getting Serious about Getting Married: Rethinking the Gift of Singleness to others. For a primer on Maken’s thesis, see her boundless.org article. I close with a portion of Al Mohler’s endorsement of Maken’s book:
“One of the most urgent questions facing today’s generation of young Christians is this –does God really intend for us to make marriage a priority? Confusion reigns in this area of the Christian life. For too many young Christians sideline marriage, delay marriage, and avoid marriage in an extension of adolescence that is truly unique in human history.”
I could not agree more. I think the negative consequences are widespread in the culture at large. We hope to raise our children in a day of recovery and revival of the blessed gift of marriage. A day in which young men and women deliberately and gladly assume the mantle of adulthood and responsibility. A day in which interest in the opposite sex is entertained in a context that assumes the appropriate goal of marriage. A day in which marriage is the non-negotiable price for sexual intimacy. A day in which married couples welcome children and men gladly assume their God-given duties of protection and provision, allowing their wives to thrive in the sphere for which God uniquely designed them.