Current affairs

Wheaton College's Dennis Hastert is the quintessential sodomite predator. Read this article, watch this video, and note all the details—every last one of them if you want to guard your children and the children of your church and school from being corrupted by such a man.

Evangelical.

Wheaton College alum.

Husband.

Father.

Note his easy access to young boys.

Note his taking these young men and boys on trips to the Caribbean.

This is precisely what the music director at one of the best-known PCA churches in the country did with the young men he taught and worked with in the church...

Back at the end of 2013, on the eve of Obamacare coming into effect for most Americans, we wrote some posts about Samaritan Ministries and other Christian health care cost sharing programs. (Here are the links to the series: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven.) Some of us who joined now have more in-depth experience with Samaritan Ministries, and we thought it was time to give an update. 

Three different families and their experiences inform this update. My wife had a hospital delivery that ended with a C-section. The sticker price was around $30,000, but the total actually paid after negotiations was closer to $10,000. All of it was covered by other Samaritan members. The Weeks family had a normal hospital delivery whose costs, at around $17,000, were all shared through Samaritan. Their daughter, Mary, has had many medical complications since her birth, and those costs have been covered by the state of Indiana's medicaid program. In the Ummel family, Jonathan had a medical emergency that almost took his life. After a life flight from Bloomington Hospital to Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis, he eventually stabilized by God's grace. Shortly thereafter he had major surgery in Chicago to correct the underlying problem. The financial burden shared by the Samaritan members totaled over six figures.

As you can see, Samaritan Ministries has played a major role in our extended family over the course of the last year. Each of us is very thankful to Samaritan and the many members who have helped bear our financial burdens. So given our experience, do we recommend Samaritan Ministries? Absolutely, but we must do so with some warnings. As you will see, there is a real non-monetary cost to joining Samaritan, but there are also some compelling reasons to do so...

Desiring God just posted an article about Holly Holm. She is the woman who beat up Ronda Rousey on Saturday night during an Ultimate Fighting Championship match and sent Rousey to the hospital. One might think that, given what the Scriptures teach and Desiring God's commitment to the Biblical view of women, that this article would be decrying the fact that Americans get their jollies by two women beating each other into a bloody pulp in the ring. But no. Instead this article praises Holly Holm for her humility and selflessness. 

The article cites Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Ronda Rousey was the arrogant, loud-mouthed, braggart, while Holm is the humble woman who overcame all odds. The author ends his article by comparing Holm to Jesus...

[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln (1861) 

[Note from TB: This post was written almost a month ago, but somehow slipped my mind so I didn't post it until now. I apologize for the delay.]

What Lincoln predicted in the aftermath of the Dred Scott decision came to pass in the 20th Century with a vengeance. State legislatures, school boards, county governments—none of which have political checks against the Supreme Court—all fell prey to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Laws against Pornography. Sorry, violates Freedom of Expression, says SCOTUS. Laws criminalizing abortion. No can do, infringes on the Right to Privacy. The death penalty. Nope, cruel and unusual punishment or violates due process or maybe it doesn't or maybe it does under certain (most) circumstances. Laws defining marriage between one man and one woman. Outta here, interferes with the Right to Define One's Own Concept of Existence and the Meaning of the Universe. No matter how long these laws had been on the books or how overwhelming the majorities were that passed them, SCOTUS swung its overruling scythe.

And for some reason Mrs. Kim Davis is accused of subverting the rule of law.... 

If you're a president who has used your authority to defy God by promoting sodomy and the slaughter of the unborn, you have to manufacture another religion. Having rejected the Creator, you turn to worship the creation, calling your followers to protect Cecil the Lion and offer sacrifices to Scientism's Clean Air. Repudiating God's ten big laws, you cover your tracks by manufacturing an infinite number of petty laws. You don't want to get a reputation as lawless. You don't want to go down in history as a Nero.

This is the explanation of President Obama's video released last night by the White House announcing new rules concerning Scientism's climate change...

If you’re a Christian and a patriot mourning this week over the unjust weights and balances of our nation’s highest law court, now’s a good time to remember there is one kingdom that will be left standing after all others fall. 

Take comfort this Independence Day in the inevitable, the irrepressible, the inexorable, the indomitable, and the interminable rule of Christ promised us in Psalm 2 (versified for singing by some of our Clearnote musicians).

Listen and be wise…

With thanks to Phil, Jake, Nathan, and Nate

[Download the audio free at Noisetrade]

Last week an NPR pundit opined on the U.S. Supreme Court’s strategy to impose sodo-matrimony on the nation. Speaking of last summer’s decision to overturn only part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the pundit explained the High Court “didn’t want to get too far out in front of the people.” This sort of cant is supposed to lull us into believing that We the People and our Injustices are headed in the same direction toward the Promised Land of sexual liberation and tolerance. In other words, the Injustices are in the vanguard as they appeal to the better angels of our nature to acquiesce in homosexual marriage. With gentle nudges, they’re only accelerating the transition from our budding, enlightened inclinations toward actions we would eventually take anyway.

In reality, for the last fifty years the Supreme Court has exercised a debasing cultural and spiritual influence on our nation. Any moral capital the Court won in outlawing segregation in 1954 was years ago forfeited as it rampaged through state law after state law after state law erected to protect the weak and innocent. Abortionists, murderers and rapists on death row, and pornographers have been frequent recipients of the Supreme Court’s solicitude and succor. Then as if that weren’t enough, in the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, homosexuals were enshrined in the constitutional Pantheon. The Court has an insatiable appetite for strong delusion.

A more honest pundit would have said that...

Historically, Clearnote Church in Bloomington, Indiana has used Google Apps for email and calendars. It's basically Gmail and Google Calendar for businesses using their own domain name.

Google also gives 501(c)3 non-profit organizations access to Google Apps for free. You just have to submit some documentation regarding your 501(c)3 status. For quite a number of years, we have been using the free edition of Google Apps here at the church.

We continue to use Google Apps to this day. Recently, I needed to reapply for non-profit status with Google Apps. I was in the process of filing the necessary "paperwork" online when I ran into a snag...

Medi-Share, run by an organization called Christian Care Ministry, is a healthcare cost-sharing program. It's like health insurance, but with a twist: it isn't technically insurance. However, becoming a member of this or other similar programs will exempt you from ObamaCare's individual mandate, so apparently such programs are enough like insurance to satisfy the federal government.

Medi-Share in particular seems to be very similar to traditional insurance, much more so than Samaritan Ministries...