Shifting American Values

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Fifteen years ago, the subject of "values" was on everyone's lips, reaching its crescendo during the political campaigns of the time. While the hubbub surrounding those national debates has died down, the importance of the subject to American life has become more critical as society has continued to coarsen and deteriorate in the intervening years. At the time, topics like homosexual unions, partial-birth abortions, ubiquitous Islamic terrorism, global warming, and illegal immigration were barely blips on the radar, while front-and-center were single-motherhood, AIDS, a desultory economy, whether Bill Clinton had inhaled, and George H.W. Bush's "read my lips: no new taxes" promise. To put it another way, in 1992, Americans were glued to the tube to watch Roseanne and Murphy Brown, and in 2007, they watch Desperate Housewives and Two and a Half Men with equal fascination. Plainly, our values have not improved.

While most pundits generalize the divide over values as a societal conflict between the Left and the Right—or Liberals versus Conservatives—this is ultimately an oversimplification. Missing from this analysis is a huge group of Moderates or Centrists that bounce from one side to the other depending on the issue. Beyond this, some groups—like apolitical churches—do not fit on this political-cultural spectrum at all, although they are frequently stuck on the extreme right wing by default. These last groups are unfortunately too insignificant (numerically) and too politically impotent (by choice) to make much of a difference to the pundits.

However, the Liberal-Conservative spectrum is instructive as a starting point in analyzing the foundational values of Americans. These labels divide the nation into progressives and traditionalists—or, in other words, those who promote experimentation and change and those who want to maintain the status quo, respectively. In more philosophic terms, left of center are those who are either passionately or unconcernedly eager to enter the brave new world of relativist humanism, while right of center are those who distrust and resist it with varying degrees of rigor.

What most analysts miss is that the entire spectrum has steadily shifted leftward since at least the early decades of the twentieth century. It has been observed, for instance, that Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan's tax cuts were similar to Liberal Democrat John F. Kennedy's twenty years before. Another example is Richard Nixon's impeachment and subsequent resignation as opposed to Bill Clinton's impeachment and subsequent non-resignation. A third illustration is the press corps' hush-hush attitude toward Kennedy's questionable affairs versus the media's indulgence toward Clinton's peccadilloes. In other words, what is considered to be radical at one time becomes mainstream a generation later. While these examples focus on presidential matters, a similar movement is easily seen in dress, speech, music, visual arts, and even religious belief. If unchecked, values tend to slide downhill.

This shift indicates a major weakness in America's values: They are no longer anchored to immovable principle. Beyond the fact that they are no longer fixed in Scripture, American cultural and political standards have only a tenuous hold on the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution! In order to legitimatize progressive rights—read, "demands"—activist judges must either stretch a Constitutional principle to the breaking point, or appeal to non-American sources, such as United Nations treaties or European Union law, to justify their existence in American jurisprudence. This is why liberal politicians advocate considering the Constitution as a "living"—read, "malleable"—document, while conservatives generally support its "original intent," meaning that its principles are "fixed." To this point—and the odds of returning to Constitutional principles are eroding daily—the progressives are sweeping to victory.

It is America's untethering from Christian and Constitutional values that keeps members of God’s church from appearing anywhere on the Liberal-Conservative spectrum. When the nation upheld a modicum of godly or biblical principles, true Christians could perhaps identify with a fair number of their fellow citizens who were also God-fearing. But now, beyond the chasm that separates us doctrinally from mainstream Christianity, we even find few fellow-travelers who desire a free, sovereign, republican America! In short, whether the issue is religious or patriotic, our views do not even register on the chart.

This is reminiscent of John 15:19: "If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." We cannot expect to have much of anything in common with this world, even with our fellow citizens—those we play with, go to school with, or work with. Their values are not our values. Their hopes are not our hopes. Their goals are not our goals. We are called to be different, set apart, sanctified by God.

Later, in His prayer before He was arrested, Jesus asks the Father:

I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. . . . Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. . . . I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. . . . Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. (John 17:9, 11, 14-15, 17)

We are both set apart and kept, or guarded, by God's Word, the truth. It is the certain and authoritative bedrock of our values. As long as we hold on to it firmly, the truth will make us very different from those around us, but it will also guide us and preserve us toward God's Kingdom, where our true citizenship resides. In these days of societal degeneration, of values lurching toward Gomorrah, our foundation stands strong, and we will too, if we keep it firmly under us.

What Makes a Civilization Great?

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A recent trip to South Africa allowed me to compare conditions in that nation with what I remember from my two previous visits, as well as what I have read and heard about it before the African National Congress, backed by international pressure, installed itself over the government. Particularly striking were a few news items and interviews brought to my attention on the present state of education there. A once-good educational system has broken down, probably past the point of no return.

Without becoming too detailed, here is a partial list of deficiencies:

• Schools are routinely vandalized of everything useful over vacation breaks.
• Teachers are scarce and terribly underpaid. Classrooms often contain scores of children under the supervision of one teacher.
• Even public schools are too expensive for many families. When they do finally scrape up enough money to enroll their children, weeks or months of the school year have already passed, putting the children impossibly behind.
• The government cannot get textbooks to the schools. In many cases, whole classes must share one book.
• In a recent national interview, the current minister of education wore a T-shirt that read, more or less, "I do only what the little voice inside my head tells me to do."

These are hardly encouraging signs of progress. To the contrary, what is occurring in South Africa, once the continent's shining beacon of prosperity, goes beyond the educational system. It is full-fledged societal disintegration. Its murder-rate is among the highest in the world, its economy is struggling, its best and brightest are fleeing to more promising climes. It is saddening to witness the double-quick dismantling of a once-great nation.

The present circumstances in South Africa reflect typically human and carnal reactions. After decades of white-rule, South African blacks are relishing their new powers and taking out their pent-up frustrations on whites. To be frank, what is being practiced is reverse discrimination under the guise of government-sanctioned equality programs. Racial quotas are strenuously enforced, rejecting highly qualified candidates in favor of those with the "correct" skin color. In many respects, the game remains the same, but the players have just switched sides.

Yet, it is really not the same. In terms of governance, the values of the opposing sides in this clash of peoples are radically divergent, mirroring the differences between Israelite and Gentile cultures. Jesus comments on this to His disciples in Matthew 20:25: "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them." The Living Bible catches the essence of Jesus' intent by rendering this, "Among the heathen, kings are tyrants and each minor official lords it over those beneath him." This is the direction South Africa seems to be heading, toward tyranny.

The essential difference that Jesus points out is that, generally, Gentile rulers exercise power to dominate those under them and to bring themselves even greater power. This is rule by a strongman, easily seen in Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Mao, Stalin, and the like. On the other hand, cultures heavily influenced by biblical principles, as the Israelite cultures have been, tend to follow more rule-of-law, power-sharing governmental schemes, such as democracy, republicanism, constitutional monarchy, and the like. These nations prioritize principles and law over the aims and ideas of the head of government.

The latter method has shown itself superior in most cases because it curtails the excesses of the power-hungry while unleashing the creative, economic, scientific, and intellectual power of the governed. For instance, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union, ruled by strongmen like Khrushchev and Brezhnev, could not keep pace with the innovative genius of the West's scientists and engineers, having to resort to military and corporate espionage to keep their arms within sight of NATO's weapons systems. This same principle is at work in the economic war between China and the United States. While the U.S. economy has its inherent weaknesses, the Chinese economy, though seeming to expand by double digits each year, is doomed to fail before long due to its unhealthy manipulation by a few powerful figures in the Chinese government. By comparison, the U.S. economy is, in principle, more robust and resilient because it relies on the combined strength and acumen of millions of businessmen, investors, and consumers. It falters only when the government tinkers too heavily with it.

Notice how Jesus continues His instruction concerning government: "Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:26-28). From this come a few principles of government that Jesus instilled within the church and which He will follow when He sets up His government on earth. The two that are most easily seen are 1) a leader must be a public servant, and 2) his primary motivation must be to sacrifice himself for the good of all.

So what makes a great civilization? A culture or a nation that employs the strongman principle of government may have a colorful history, but it will never amount to a truly great civilization. That title is reserved for those peoples who practice the principles of government set down in God's Word. However imperfectly performed, those societies that have enshrined biblical principles in their constitutions have enjoyed peace, progress, prosperity, prestige, and power far beyond the crude dictatorships of strongmen. As Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 show, God backs up His eternal laws with both blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience, and they are still in effect. The more a society incorporates His laws of good governance into its government, the greater and more lasting its civilization will be.

Solomon wrote three thousand years ago in Proverbs 29:2, "When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan." How true it is.

The Prayer Conundrum

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For some reason, over the past few days there have been several occasions in which the subject of prayer and its efficacy has come up. Perhaps it is pure coincidence, but on the other hand, maybe it is a subtle hint that something needs to be written about it. I will hedge my bets and continue with this essay.

To many people, it is a head-scratcher to consider the vagaries of answered prayer—or should I say "unanswered prayer"? That is precisely the puzzler: Why are some prayers answered and some not? Why are some people miraculously healed of a dreaded disease, while others with the same affliction suffer ghastly declines and die? Is there rhyme or reason to having one's prayer answered, or is it just the luck of the draw?

So far, we have not mentioned God, yet it is our understanding of Him that either provides us the answer or leaves us confused, dejected, and perhaps in doubt. In fact, to true believers, prayer is a prime example of God's existence and providence. On the other hand, skeptics almost invariably bring up the "prayer question" when spreading their disbelief, saying, "How can a loving God allow those who pray to Him to suffer so much?" Or, "Statistically, praying people are only a little more fortunate than non-praying people when it comes to overcoming normally fatal illnesses." Or, "There is no proof whatsoever that one's prayers rise any higher than the ceiling. Didn't Solomon say, 'Everything occurs alike to all' in Ecclesiastes 9:2? So how can we know that a so-called 'answer to prayer' is more than mere happenstance?"

No one who knows God would utter such cynical things. The Supreme Being revealed in the pages of the Bible is not capricious, uncaring, distracted, respecting of persons, or absent without leave, as these doubting comments suggest. To the contrary, Scripture shows Him to be reliable, loving, alert, just, and involved in the affairs of His creatures. If not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without His notice, how much more involved is He with the well-being of humanity—and individual humans? Thus, the mystery surrounding the answered-prayer question cannot be solved by finding fault with God or by doubting Him or His existence.

The fault lies in us, in our understanding of His purpose and in our expectations of what He will do.

At its most critical level, the solution to this prayer conundrum begins with the fact that God tells us to pray to Him. If we believe that He is reasonable and purposeful, we must conclude that He has determined that praying is meaningful and helpful to us. By itself, praying to God benefits us whether or not any of our requests are fulfilled. This has little to do with such things as whether we live longer or are healthier or happier because we pray. All things considered, God is less concerned with our length of days or our joie de vivre than He is with our eternal life and spiritual character, though He certainly wants us well and joyful. Therefore, the reason God commands us to pray to Him is fundamentally spiritual in nature and so the benefits of praying are also mostly spiritual.

Jesus teaches in John 17:3 that eternal life is knowing "the only true God, and Jesus Christ." This informs us, then, that true spirituality, true religion, revolves around a relationship with God the Father and His Son. Communication is vital to the success of any relationship, and prayer is fundamentally a form of communication. Through the sacrifice of our Savior and the facility of the Holy Spirit given to all true Christians, in prayer we have an open line of communication with the very God of the universe! Prayer allows us to maintain and deepen our relationship with our Father and Elder Brother despite the distance and the differences in our natures.

In addition, Jesus came to reveal the Supreme Being to mankind as a Father (John 1:18), and He instructs us to come before Him in prayer as children to their Father (Matthew 6:9). This sets the basic bounds of the relationship: of a loving, faithful Father to his obedient and adoring children. It is not a relationship of equals, nor is it a business partnership or trade association. It is a family relationship, in which God is the ultimate Superior and the other, the Christian, a humble subordinate. In all relationships of this kind, the will and purposes of the superior always take priority. As even Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, after asking for His cup of suffering and death to pass from Him, "Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done" (Luke 22:42).

To summarize these factors:

1. God's character is unimpeachable.
2. God commands us to pray, so it must be for our good, first spiritually, then physically.
3. God desires an intimate, eternal relationship with us, and prayer allows us to communicate with Him.
4. God's relationship with us is as a loving but authoritative Father to His children.

These are not the only principles we need to understand about prayer, but they are among the most important. What do they imply?

First, prayer is not simply a means of getting things from God. In fact, if that is our approach to prayer, we are working counter to God's purpose for us, for He is trying to instill His giving, outgoing character in us. Until we change our motives for praying, we will find prayer to be frustrating and ineffective.

Second, prayer is just one facet of a far larger, spiritual relationship. It must be seen in its place in God's purpose in our lives. We may be praying from morning until night, but it will be just a string of empty words if we are not also conforming the rest of our lives to the will of God.

Third, prayer requires faith. The world's view of faith is cheap and simplistic, but biblical faith—real confidence in God's goodness toward us—is an essential part of Christian prayer. A Christian who prays in faith makes his petitions known to God and trusts that he is not only heard but answered to his ultimate good. Whether the answer is "positive" or "negative," he can smile and say, "What You decide on this request is the best for me right now."

This final point is what Paul concludes in Romans 8:23-30: God knows best what will bring us to eternal life and glory in His Kingdom. So, in the end, to those who know God, there really is no prayer conundrum. Our prayers are heard and answered, and all things will work out for the good of those whom God has chosen to have a loving relationship with Him.

Hijacking Our Language

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The English language is a huge, vibrant, beautiful tongue. No language on earth can compare to its breadth and depth. The definitive Oxford English Dictionary, the unofficial but accepted authority on the language, lists and defines more than a half-million words, far more than any other language spoken today. Thousands of words are added each year through the coining of new words, the combining of old words, and the borrowing of foreign words, although the curmudgeonly among lexiphiles grumble about these additions, declaiming that the language already contains words that mean what the new words attempt to describe.

Far more pernicious, however, is the purposeful twisting of common words' meanings to fit and promote a particular political point of view. This came out during the recent debate over President Bush's deployment of 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. The Bush administration and its backers said this was a "surge" in troop levels, spinning the policy as a positive push to wrest control of the region from the insurgents and bring peace and victory.

Its opponents, however, described it using a different term: To them, it was an "escalation," bringing back long memories of a similar troop buildup in Vietnam—and of the disastrous results that ultimately followed. (It should be noted, however, that the additional soldiers in Vietnam did not cause the ignominious retreat from that country; it was a lack of political will to defeat the Viet-Cong.) The two sides have also volleyed the terms "withdrawal" and "redeployment," as well as "terrorist" and "insurgent," among others.

Another example of language abuse is the oft-heard term, "homophobe," used as a pejorative for anyone who opposes homosexuality. It is a total misnomer, as its intrinsic meaning is "fear of sameness" (homo- "same" + phobia "fear"). As can be easily seen, it is similar to words such as "arachnophobia" (fear of spiders), "altophobia" (fear of heights), and "xenophobia" (fear of strangers or foreigners). "Homophobia" has been hijacked by the liberal left and distorted to mean "hatred of homosexuals" in order to paint its opposition as irrational, untrustworthy, and even dangerous. Not content with morphing gay from "merry" to "homosexual," the left has violated the English language to its own debased ends.

Similarly, a further distortion of language has occurred with the usage of "tolerant" and its negative, "intolerant." In its original sense, tolerant means "inclined to forbear or endure," implying that a person would put up with something known to be morally wrong, dangerous, annoying, etc., for an indeterminate time. However, the word is now being used to mean "accepting without bias of what is different" or even "welcoming" of the same. The politically correct crowd demands that society "tolerate," not just cultural differences, but also sexual perversity and religious deception as if they were normal and morally equivalent to what is good and true. A person is considered "intolerant"—and likely to be ridiculed, hated, and perhaps persecuted—if he expresses any opinion that does not grant full normalcy to any unbiblical belief or deviant behavior, including pederasty, Wicca, terrorism, same-sex unions, children’s rights, Islam, feminism, or whatever the liberal cause of the week happens to be.

Speaking of belief, another word that is becoming warped is "fundamentalism." Originally, this word was coined to describe a twentieth-century Protestant movement that stressed a literal interpretation of Scripture as "fundamental to Christian life and teaching," as Webster's so succinctly phrases it. Although not Protestant, the church of God would generally agree with this approach. However, "fundamentalist" has been turned against those who practice fundamentalism, becoming a derogatory term meaning "fanatic, right-wing religious nut."

Incredible as it may seem, this definition has been helped along by the rise of Islamic terrorism. These terrible acts of violence have been perpetrated by Muslims adhering to Wahhabism, a literal, ultraconservative, and quite belligerent interpretation of the Koran. Rosie O'Donnell and others of her ilk have made ridiculous public statements in which Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists are equated—as if Jerry Falwell has a global network of militant Christians devising havoc against innocent civilians throughout the Muslim world.

What is occurring to the English language recalls the prophet's cry in Isaiah 5:20, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" The malicious alteration of language is one more black mark against a society descending rapidly toward a disastrous fall, weakened first by its own suicidal behavior before succumbing to its encircling enemies. Isaiah broadens the principle of distortion to include not just words but also morality, ideas, impressions, and even sensory perceptions. When black equals white in so many areas of human life, all distinctions disappear—and rather than the world coming together in bliss and harmony, it produces weakness and eventual dissolution. Such is the theme of the decline and fall of most of the great civilizations.

Words are important, for through them come all ideas, good or bad. In the end, they are but symbols whose meanings can often be distorted to suit intent of the author, and we need to be attentive to their use so that we are not deceived. Remember Jesus' first warning in the Olivet Prophecy: "Take heed that no one deceives you" (Matthew 24:4). In this day of politically correct language, it is very good advice.

Big-Picture Thinking

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It has become traditional as we flip our Gregorian calendars from December to January each year to assess the old year and resolve to amend our faults and shortcomings in the new. Unfortunately, the assessing has devolved into a series of meaningless "Best of" and "Worst of" lists, while the amending of our ways chiefly concerns foods we love to eat, liquids we like to drink, weight we need to lose, and exercise we ought to do. As for real soul-searching and determination to improve one's character, for most that has passed from the scene with the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon.

In the church, we often relegate these exercises to the run-up to Passover, as we follow the dictate in II Corinthians 13:5 to examine ourselves. We consider our spiritual growth over the past year—or lack thereof—and resolve to pursue real change with zeal and humility. This is all to the good. As anyone who has ever tackled a long-term project knows, frequent evaluation and subsequent course-correction help to keep the project on track and focused on the goal. The process we are involved with in cooperation with the God of the universe is essentially the same with the exception that it is far more important.

Most of us, it seems, tend to approach this annual self-evaluation from a micro rather than macro perspective. In other words, we ignore the big questions of life to focus on the details of our personal circumstances. Instead of stepping back and trying to see how the whole fits together, we stoop down to examine the minutest pieces individually and separately. As Jesus instructed on an entirely different topic, "These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone" (Matthew 23:23).

This oft-repeated tendency is not surprising, since the world routinely takes the same path. It is, frankly, an offshoot of the selfishness, the self-centeredness, of human nature. We are so often involved in our own thoughts and feelings—all of the time, really—that we naturally gravitate toward I, me, and mine to the nth degree. And I, me, and mine so interest us that we are likely to pursue what we think is best for them with such attention and devotion that all else is diminished, ignored, or even forgotten as of little account. Thus, our age is marked with the stain of narcissism, and its blot has bled through into God’s church to no small extent.

A few decades ago, the church was frequently reminded of some of the big issues of life through the preaching of Herbert W. Armstrong. Each holy day, or at least each Feast of Tabernacles, he would force us to ask ourselves, "Why are we here?" He meant, not just "Why are we celebrating this holy time?" but also "Why do we exist?" "Why has God called us?" "Why have the events of our lives, ordained and manipulated by our sovereign God, brought us to this point?" "Where are we headed?" "Where does God want us to go, and what is He doing to get us there?" Too often, having heard the sermon many times before, we listened politely but took little of it to heart.

How true is the saying, "If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else"! Pursuing the answers to the big questions should determine the goal. If we fail to revisit the overarching principles from time to time, we are liable to stray from the most direct course toward their achievement. Once we begin to wander from the path, sin—missing the mark—enters into the picture.

In Old Testament times, God commanded Israel to do certain things so that they would remember that they were part of a people who had made a covenant with God and that this agreement constrained them to live differently than all other peoples on earth. For instance, God ordered the people to wear tassels on the corners of their garments to remember who they were, how they were to behave, and who was their God:

Speak to the children of Israel: Tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a blue thread in the tassels of the corners. And you shall have the tassel, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them, and that you may not follow the harlotry to which your own heart and your own eyes are inclined, and that you may remember and do all My commandments, and be holy for your God. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God. (Numbers 15:38-41)

Under the New Covenant, Christians are not required to do this, but the principle it expresses is still apropos. We need to be reminded frequently to take a step back, to remember our place and mission before God, and to evaluate how well we have followed His lead. This points out the tragedy in the loss of the Sabbath in the Christianity of this world, for though Christians do not have to wear tassels, the fourth commandment reads, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8). The Sabbath day is a weekly reminder of God, His creation (both the physical creation and the ongoing spiritual creation), His holiness, and our participation with Him in His plan. These are all big-picture items.

Once each year is not enough to evaluate our course. God provides us an opportunity once each week to do some big-picture thinking, to take a measurement and re-orient our prow toward the one point on the horizon that will bring us to our predetermined destination, the Kingdom of God.

Business as Usual

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Columnist Robert Novak, perhaps best known these days for his involvement in revealing the identity of Valerie Plame (Wilson) as a CIA operative, has uncovered another fetid example of "business as usual" in the halls of Congress. As he writes in his "Evans-Novak Political Report" for December 6, 2006, his latest exposé concerns, "a patent measure that looks like a technical change to an obscure section of the U.S. Code . . ., but it is an illustration of how Washington works at its worst."

The measure involves giving a solitary business, the Medicines Company, the ability to extend its patent retroactively. This hardly seems important. The firm's lawyers were one day too late in 2001 in filing the patent extension paperwork for its heart drug, AngioMax, so what? However, the error could end up costing the company $500 million in profits after the original patent expires in 2010. The extension, if granted, would allow the Medicines Company to monopolize the manufacture and sale of AngioMax until 2014 or 2015. Once the patent expires, whether earlier or later, other drug companies will be able to produce a cheaper, generic version.

One would think that the Medicines Company would sue its lawyers for their delinquency in filing the paperwork, but instead, it has hired high-priced Washington lobbyists to get Congress to grant them a retroactive, five-day extension of the deadline by adding it as a measure to another bill. As Novak writes, "But the blatant wheeling and dealing in order to get special treatment offers a rare window into the disturbing bipartisan self-dealing that goes on in Washignton [sic]."

The measure is being sponsored by two Republicans from Tennessee and two Democrats from Massachusetts, a wondrous bipartisan achievement in itself. On September 14, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property held a hearing on this measure, which one objector snidely named the "Sorry-I'm-Late-the-Dog-Ate-My-Homework Act." Testimony clearly revealed that the bill was designed to benefit only one company—and solely because this company had the good fortune of hiring the best lobbyists money could buy. Nevertheless, the measure was not blocked.

Presently, its backers want to attach the measure to a bill concerning designs for ship hulls, one authored by Texas Senator John Cornyn, a Republican. The lobbyists and sponsors have chosen Cornyn's bill because he is one of only a handful of senators that would likely object to the patent measure, and he would not want to hold up his bill just to stymie the passage of the one provision. Thus, it will probably pass into American law.

Except in terms of the dollar amounts involved, how is the Medicines Company's lawyers' error any different from Joe Citizen's failure to postmark his tax return before midnight on April 15? What right does he have to lobby Congress to erase his delinquency? None. He is required by law to pay whatever fine or interest that accrues due to his error. Why should this business, though it undoubtedly generates millions of dollars of commerce each year, be able to both rectify and profit from its own error?

But despite what our founding documents might say, there is no equality under the law in the United States of America. Using plenty of money, connections, and power as lubricants, a corporation can slip its preferences into the law to the exclusion of all others. This is nothing new. It has been happening in this country since its earliest days, but it is disheartening to see such pandering and peddling of influence being done so brazenly and matter-of-factly.

Such a thing is a fulfillment of the prophecies of Amos, which deal largely with matters of social injustice and corruption. The prophet rails against the wealthy and powerful "sell[ing] the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals" (Amos 2:6), and "afflicting the just and taking bribes; diverting the poor from justice at the gate" (Amos 5:12). He paints a picture of a people groaning under the oppression and corruption of its own leaders, "notable persons in the chief nation" (Amos 6:1). The leadership lives luxuriously, seemingly unaware and unconcerned that the nation is disintegrating under them and that the common people are suffering. Why should they worry? They have everything they want, and no calamity can touch them.

Yet, they leave God out of the picture because they have forgotten Him. Seeing how they afflict and take advantage of their own people, He promises:

For behold, the LORD gives a command: He will break the great house into bits, and the little house into pieces. . . . "I will raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel," says the LORD God of hosts; "and they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath to the Valley of the Arabah [from north to south]" (Amos 6:11, 14).

Notice that He promises to "break . . . the little house into pieces" too, which might seem unfair to the oppressed and afflicted who lived in those little houses. However, God is just, and He sees the hearts of all. Evidently, He discerns that the sins of both high and low, wealthy and poor, are merely matters of degree. Were the poor and downtrodden in the same positions as the wealthy and powerful, they would commit the same sins and crimes. As Isaiah puts it, the whole nation is sick—full of sin—from head to toe (Isaiah 1:5-6).

Would we do the same as the Medicines Company if we were in its place? Psalm 15 says that a person who will be allowed to dwell in God's holy hill "swears to his own hurt and does not change" (verse 4). This is a principle of godly character, applicable in this situation. In other words, a Christian takes his lumps, as it were, when he makes a mistake, even if it hurts. He does not try to work against or around the law to benefit himself at the expense of others. This is an attitude that imitates that of Jesus, who "when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously" (I Peter 2:23).

In Washington, it will unfortunately continue to be business as usual. What will it be in our house?

A Day of Inconvenient Truths

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Former presidential candidate and senator from Tennessee, Albert Gore, Jr., spent the first half of 2006 jet setting throughout the United States and Europe to tout his new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. In it, he proclaimed the end of the world as we know it, but despite his Bible Belt origins, his apocalyptic vision does not include even a whiff of biblical prophecy. He is a proponent of sudden, disastrous, worldwide climate change due to global warming, the kind imagined in another recent movie, The Day After Tomorrow. So, any day now—perhaps even as soon as this coming Sunday—everyone north of the Tropic of Cancer or thereabouts will either be frozen solid or huddled, shivering and blue, in their own custom igloos.

The irony of the Gore movie's title is delicious, right alongside Bill "The Gambler" Bennett's Book of Virtues and the late Sam Walton's Made in America. An Inconvenient Truth purports to marshal the facts on global warming and predicts the dire consequences of ignoring them. Yet, the movie itself turns a blind eye to the mounds of scientific evidence that contradict its premise. They are themselves rather inconvenient.

For instance, the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels has written two well-documented books, The Satanic Gases and Meltdown, both of which conclusively explain that, while there has been some increase in global temperatures over the past few decades, the warming trend has been quite gradual and natural—and certainly will not produce catastrophic results. In fact, temperatures rose much more rapidly in the decades before 1940, and there were no adverse effects then. Michaels' offerings are just a few of the many books and studies published in the last few years to balance the environmentalist left's Chicken Little scenario.

That is exactly what it is: a fake crisis, based loosely on debatable science, promoted to advance a political agenda. As Michael Crichton explained in his book, State of Fear, movers and shakers of all stripes have learned that manufacturing crises, producing doubt and fear in the populace, opens the electorate to suggestion and manipulation. Although these influential members of society and advocacy groups assert the truth is on their side, they really care little about it. Their first rule is "the ends justify the means."

In the past few weeks, another issue has moved forward in the face of inconvenient facts. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel, a Democrat and soon-to-be powerful House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, has pledged to introduce a bill to reinstate involuntary conscription to the U.S. military—the draft. The crisis he has created, along with willing abettors in the mainstream media, is that of class warfare. He claims that the poor and disadvantaged comprise a disproportional percentage of the armed forces. In other words, the wealthy and elite in this country do not contribute their fair share to the nation's defense in terms of manpower.

What are the inconvenient truths that Rangel ignores? The Heritage Foundation's Dr. Tim Kane has engaged in an exhaustive study of the composition of U.S. military recruits since 1999. He and his associates have found that Representative Rangel has reached the exact opposite conclusion to the facts. For instance, Kane's "Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003–2005" relates:

The current findings show that the demographic characteristics of volunteers have continued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality. . . . Those who have been so quick to suggest that today's wartime recruits represent lesser quality, lower standards, or lower class should be expected [to] make an airtight case. Instead, they have cited selective evidence, which is balanced by a much clearer set of evidence showing improving troop quality.

. . . For example, it is commonly claimed that the military relies on recruits from poorer neighborhoods because the wealthy will not risk death in war. This claim has been advanced without any rigorous evidence. Our review of Pentagon enlistee data shows that the only group that is lowering its participation in the military is the poor. The percentage of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods (with one-fifth of the U.S. population) declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 14.6 percent in 2003, 14.1 percent in 2004, and 13.7 percent in 2005. . . .

In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) support the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight differences are that wartime U.S. military enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers. (Emphasis ours.)

What is Representative Rangel up to? How can he ignore such obvious facts? He is advancing a political agenda to punish the wealthy and privileged, as he imagines them, and to extort money and benefits for his poor and downtrodden constituents, as they are only in his own mind. Stripped of all its rhetoric, his proposal is sheer socialism, arbitrarily redistributing wealth and advantage to those who have shown no inclination to earn it for themselves. But then, socialists have never let the truth weigh them down.

As Christians, as keepers of the Ten Commandments, we are bound to the truth. Whatever kind of truth it is—religious, scientific, political, social, financial—we must give it its due regard. Yet, we live in a nation—in a world—in which the pursuit and respect for truth is waning and almost gone. God says through Jeremiah: "'And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies. They are not valiant for the truth on the earth. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know Me,' says the LORD" (Jeremiah 9:3).

But we do know Him, and we have a responsibility to "buy the truth, and sell it not" (Proverbs 23:23, KJV). As liars and deceivers increase (II Timothy 3:13), we must be on the lookout for those who press on with their agendas despite the inconvenient truths of reality. No good end will come on those whose lives are built on lies.