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First Lady Obama's hypocrisy: what's this "we" white woman...

Following Paul Ryan’s tepid endorsement, it didn’t take long for Donald Trump to have Ryan wishing he hadn’t. Trump continues to do his worst to divide us along Anglo/Hispanic lines and the latest was his attack on Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the presiding judge over the Trump University debacle. Trump said Judge Curiel has “conflicts of interest” which render him incapable of judicial objectivity and he wants him off the case: “He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico."

Trump’s bombast in service of his churlishness is an uncapped fire hydrant. Maybe the best reason not to vote for him is careful consideration of what the world would look like with this blowhard jumping into the steaming cauldron of Ki Jinping, Duterte, Kim Jong-un, Khamenei, ISIS, Netanyahu, and Putin—four of them with nuclear triggers and two others close.

Which brings me to the woman who includes you and me in her imperial “we." First Lady Michelle Obama claims to speak for all of us when she says Donald Trump “is not who we are." "We don’t build up walls to keep people out.” Mrs. Obama continues, "I have seen how leaders [who] dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer.” She concludes, "that is not who we are. ...no we’re all in this together. We always have been.”

What Mrs. Obama hides and members of the press are too bathed in the bloodshed of their own children to reveal is that... 


Hormones, plastic surgery, and transplants...

During the past couple of weeks, I've seen two news items showing our nation's sexual debauchery is about to reach even greater depths. The first was a report on the progress being mode on womb transplants. The second was an announcement earlier today that Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital has performed the nation's first penis transplant.

While I'm thankful this transplant will help a cancer patient, we'd all be fools to think...


Denny Hastert, Evangelical, Wheaton College alum, husband, father...

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...


What's wrong with playing the lottery...

Note from Tim Bayly: Many believers gamble, some in the stock market while others play bingo or the lottery. Famous Christian celebrities play poker together, for money, while others gamble in casinos. This pastoral warning against gambling by David Wegener was published here back in 2009. Given the lottery craze of the past week or so, it seemed like a good time to run it again.

We got some new books for the Theological College of Central Africa library, recently. Now they are being processed to go into the collection and I was reading one of them this morning. The book is John H. Leith's Pilgrimage of a Presbyterian: Collected Shorter Writings, 2001, edited by Charles E. Raynal; Louisville: Geneva Press.

On pages 208-13, the book republishes a short article Leith wrote in 1956 titled, "Gambling--What's Wrong with It?." Here's a summary...


Revisiting Samaritan Ministries...

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...


The diversionary tactics of Desiring God Ministries...

dianaephesus2.jpgThe words of the heathen poet (Juvenal) are very true: “What shame can she, who wears a helmet, show, Her sex deserting?”

- John Calvin

Despite the fact that it has been shared over 10,000 times, it is easy to see the problems with the recent Desiring God piece promoting rebellion against God's Creation Order of sexuality. It's not quite so easy to see what Desiring God was trying to accomplish with this piece. Partly that is because of the editor's note that precedes the piece, reassuring readers that Desiring God hasn't gone soft. It's also hard to understand the piece because many of us don't realize its larger context—namely, the intense blowback Desiring God and John Piper received in connection with their teaching on sexuality.

First, the editor's note...


I don't want it...

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...


Our Bloomington, Indiana City Council is at it again..

Our city fathers here in Bloomington, Indiana are not content simply to stand idly by watching their beloved Planned Parenthood suffer any amount of reproach. Instead, they intend to issue a resolution on the floor of their council meeting this Wednesday evening at 7:30pm titled "Resolution 15-21: In Support of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky." Shameless doesn't even begin to describe it...


Black-robed tyrants vs. Mrs. Kim Davis...

[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.... 


In film exposures of Planned Parenthood, do ends justify means?

Pastor Doug Wilson recently did a helpful post exploring the ethics of tactical deception on the part of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). He got me thinking about what constitutes a moral obligation of full disclosure and whether parameters for godly deception can be marked out.

I have had discussions with Christians who are very pleased by CMP’s work, but are conflicted regarding tactical deception. They wonder if they’re giving into saying “the ends justify the means.” In addition to this, there are R2K proponents criticizing CMP for their “unethical” methods for infiltrating PP. The former are understandably conflicted, the latter are selectively squeamish—dare I say pietistic—about operating within the “common” kingdom.

Adding to the mess is the media’s selectivity in reporting on CMP's videos while also reporting names linked to a website dedicated to facilitating adulterous liaisons...


President Obama is a very religious man...

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...


To topple abortion, we must strike at the root...

Like many of you, the videos released by the Center for Medical Progress have dominated my thoughts for the past two weeks. I attended the defund Planned Parenthood rally here in Bloomington, and I am glad to see what appears to be real momentum to defund Planned Parenthood. I pray that it continues.

But the very political and social momentum caused by the videos has led me to consider various "what ifs". What if government money was taken away from Planned Parenthood? What if abortion after 20 weeks was made illegal? What if all abortion was made illegal? What then?

As it currently stands, over one million abortions are performed in our country each year. That's over one million sisters, mothers and daughters who decide to kill their own child. That's over one million brothers, fathers, and sons who encourage it, pay for it, or simply split and ignore it. 21% of all U.S. pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. That's nearly one in four. (Statistics found here.) There is an enormous demand for abortion in this country, and outlawing abortion will not remove that demand...


Independence Day...

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]


Emergency room doc says Ebola and flu patients should go home...

Here's an interesting piece by an Indy doc who says hospitals are not the place to treat sick people with Ebola or the flu. He makes one or two good points, but note how hospitals have changed from Christian institutions of medical care—St. Francis, Divine Savior, St. Jude, Presbyterian-St. Luke—to businesses streamlined to make lots of money for corporations and their stockholders.

Love used to be the inspiration and motivation for most of these institutions; love inspired by the love of Jesus Christ. Now it's money and any name put on the hospital that speaks of love is merely an attempt at window dressing. In fact, hospitals' names have become meaningless.

Our local hospital (where Baby Doe was murdered by starvation by her parents and their doctor and Judge Baker thirty-two years ago) was called "Bloomington Hospital" until a couple years ago when a large "non-profit" corporation, Clarian, licensed IU's name and logo. So now "IU Health" is plastered everywhere—on our Bloomington hospital's facade as well as the facades of hundreds of medical facilities around our state (look west as you drive south on I-65 between Merrillville and Crown Point).

The process is something like Waste Management, Inc. licensing Apple's name and logo and plastering it all over their garbage trucks, sanitary landfills, garbage cans, and dumpsters because their garbage truck drivers use iPhones...


Visualize impeachment...

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...


Is Google illegally discriminating against religious organizations?

Under my recent post regarding the Google Apps user agreement for non-profits, a discussion was started about how Christians should respond to terms of service like the one mentioned in the post. Here's my attempt to restate the position of one commenter:

The best way to keep the interpretation of these regulations (and terms of service, clauses, etc) from becoming established in a way that does violence to our understanding of the words used in them is to agree to said regulations and then battle it out in court if the need arises. We all see how Google and others are trying to set precedents that we disagree with, and so we shouldn't simply accept their interpretations, but should instead fight them. So, in this case, Christians should agree to Google's terms of service and then be ready to fight it out if the matter ends up in court.

I hope that I have accurately stated the position of the commenter. Here's my response:

Let's start with the word "discriminate". This commenter stated that "discrimination involves a denial of someone's civil rights." I don't think that's right, and I don't think that's how Google understands the word, either. The word "discriminate" now carries a great deal of negative baggage...


Google's evil karma: user agreements...

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...


ObamaCare: What you need to know (Part 7): Samaritan Ministries and accountability...

This comment under a recent post about Christian health sharing ministries raises a very good point which should be addressed in greater detail. Here's the full comment:

The point I would stress here is that there seems to be a strange exception to the normal vetting process that occurs in dealing with these "ministries".

If a member of your church came to you for advice, and said they had been watching a televangelist with big hair at 2 a.m. on cable TV asking for money, and they had decided to send him $300 per month, you would raise an eyebrow, and politely start asking vetting questions about how the oversight board is appointed, actuarial audits, who is being paid how much, etc. These "health-sharing ministries" tend to get a free pass. Try getting real data, not summary un-audited financials--good luck. They shouldn't get less scrutiny than the company that insures your house, for pete's sake. The new law gives a break--finally!--to large families. Go to healthsherpa.org or kaiser subsidy calculator.org, and see for yourself.

"They shouldn't get less scrutiny than the company that insures your house" is right on, and that's why I decided to place a call to Samaritan Ministries...


ObamaCare: What you need to know (Part 6): Evaluating Medi-Share...

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...


ObamaCare: What you need to know (Part 5): Interested in Samaritan Ministries? I am too...

(Many thanks to Joe Helt for contributing to this post.)

Samaritan Ministries (not to be confused with Samaritan's Purse) is not insurance. If you're going to understand Samaritan Ministries, you must simply put the model of "buying health insurance" out of your mind. In fact, the quickest way to understand the ministry is to understand that signing up for it, instead of signing up for a traditional health insurance plan, makes you a "self-pay" patient.

That's right. The bill for your medical expenses is on you.

That sure sounds scary, right? It does to me. But stick with me. There's good news, too...