A Minor Musing About Mixing Knives And Jesus

While he lived on the farm, my father always carried a pocket knife. My mother had a butcher knife that she was particularly fond of when it came time to butcher chickens. To prevent my wife from yelling at me, I will confess only to having not a few full-sized folders and multi tools along with an equal number of the keychain variety. Further I am willing to hold forth for an extended period of time about my conviction that the Cold Steel company's Triad locking mechanism is one of the best locking mechanisms ever invented for a folding knife. All of this is a long way of saying that I have no problems with knives and and an admission that I probably own too many.

I have no problem with Jesus. He died to save the human race from sin. Jesus was seemingly ambivalent about sharp objects. He told his disciples to have some  swords with them, but he wasn't too keen on swords being used in a particular garden, The scriptures seem silent on His view of locking or slipjoint folding knives.

This post is prompted by my discovery of Overcomer Knives, maker of custom knives including Roman Samurai Slayer and the Israelite. Some of the offerings include rams horn scales. The company's website homepage references Luke 22:36-38, the passage that has Jesus telling his disciples to be sure to have swords:

36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

37 For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.

38 And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.

On the About Us page contains the following paragraph:

Until a bar stock piece of steel is shaped, heat treated and formed into its Master’s image it will not overcome. Once this steel is made into a knife it becomes an overcomer. It will overcome trials and adversity in the hands of its Master. WHY CHOOSE AN OVERCOMER KNIFE? Jesus Christ is put at the forefront of Overcomer Knives. A samurai sword is highly esteemed by many in this world. It is a religious experience for the sword maker, when making a samurai sword. The sword maker prays to a false god until the completion of the sword. Here at Overcomer Knives, I pray to the true living God, the Lord Jesus Christ, until the completion of a knife. I am self taught and have done extensive research on what type of steel is the best to use. All of my knives are made of air quenched steel, A2, CPM 3V and CPM 4V. All heat treating and tempering is done in my shop with a digital kiln. No two knives are exactly alike. I make my knives as the Spirit of the Lord leads me. The Scandinavian people are true outdoorsmen. This is seen in many of their knife grinds and designs. All of my knives come with a Scandinavian type grind. This is my favorite grind and is ideal for sharpening. I also add an additional edge on top of the Scandinavian grind for added strength. All of my knife designs are original and unique. I make my knives with the Spirit of the Lord leading me. Take a close look at my Roman Samurai Slayer. The Lord gave me this design from an ancient concept of catching an opponent’s blade. This knife can save your life from a Samurai sword attack in a last ditch effort. I test each knife personally with a real Samurai sword to make sure the knife can catch and deter it. All of my knives are guaranteed for life or until the return of Christ, whatever comes first, and against defects in workmanship or materials. A Born Again Christian overcomes through the blood of Jesus Christ. I will build a knife for you that will help you overcome anything the enemy can dish out.

 If I am reading the paragraph correctly, I am supposed to buy a knife from this company because the design came from God and the design will allow me to overcome any pagan samurai I encounter, especially that rare breed of samurai based in Rome. Further, the knifemaker's faith expressed in his prayers apparently will accompany the knife as the new owner takes possession of it and uses it to vanquish the enemy. Given the tone of the passage, it's not quite clear whether the enemy is a physical samurai or the devil taking the form of a "roaring lion seeking whom it may devour." It's also unclear how the company will honor its warranty if Jesus doesn't return until the year 2525.

I don't have a problem with Saddleback Leather including a tract in their briefcases. I'm fine with business owners' claiming that their faith dictates that they close on Sunday. This effort, on the other hand, turns faith into a weird niche marketing tool that equates Christianity to preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse. If I am going to spend hundreds for a single knife instead of shop for the best value under $50, I'll spend a lot of time praying and buy a Chris Reeve Small Sebenza

Quotation Of The Day: Belief, Faith, And Doubt Edition

From Matthew Sitman writing at Andrew Sullivan's blog:

But most of all, Misener’s essay points to the sad state of so much American religious life, especially the messages delivered by too many Christian churches. She makes clear that, at times, she still feels “a wave of something truly ineffable, a surreal flutter in my soul that the world was vast and overwhelming and rich and meaningful and also not really fucking meaningful at all.” That’s something most of us have felt, I’d guess, whether believer or not. It’s a pity that the brittle, ahistorical, and ultimately untenable evangelicalism she was peddled convinced her that those feelings are alien to Christianity, that faith demands the silencing of doubt and uncertainty. It’s a shame that too many Christian churches present the Bible in such a way that, when an earnest young person encounters the historical-critical approach to it, the result is shock and perplexity. It’s lamentable that more churches aren’t places where such difficulties can be worked through, where you feel welcome even if you are far from having what you believe figured out. Pope Francis has said that the Church should be a “hospital for sinners,” which is to say a refuge for all of us who struggle in all kinds of ways, profound doubt included. Misener’s story is testimony to how far Christians have to go to make the Pope’s words a reality.

The essay Sitman refers to is here. Rod Dreher gives his Orthodox take here.

Quotation Of The Day: Christians And Politics Edition

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobrey succinctly points out something I have believed for a long time.

Because if you believe that the person of Jesus Christ is "the Truth," then the corollary that logically follows is that everything that is not Jesus Christ is not "the Truth."

To put it more practically: To be a Christian is to believe that all political ideologies are suspect. And wrong. It doesn't mean that Christians should retreat from all political ideologies — as that would also be a political ideology, and also wrong. By all means, be a Christian liberal. Be a Christian conservative. But if you are a Christian liberal, if you are a Christian conservative, then by definition there will be tensions between your Christianity and your political ideology. It's axiomatic. And if you are a Christian first and an ideologue second, you should confront those tensions instead of papering over them.

Let's take my own tent of Christian conservatism, since this is about us.

Yes, it is absolutely possible to be a Christian and believe that limited government and free markets are the best ways to advance the prospects of the poor. But when conservatives portray the poor as moochers and divide the world into "Makers" and "Takers," and hold up those "Takers" quite clearly as objects of contempt, the Christian has to recoil. And not just recoil, but cry injustice.

Real Christian Persecution

Colbert King has a great editorial in the Washington Post about Christians in Africa and the Middle East being murdered because of their faith. The key quotation epitomizes snark well done:

But why should we know much about the killing of Christians when news of Washington’s political food fights, the looming federal shutdown and the National Zoo’s new panda cub keep getting in the way?

Some on the political right contend that there's a war on Christians in the United States. King's editorial reminds all what a real war on Christians would look like. The piece also illustrates hat those who chose to use that metaphor are cheapening the martyrdom of real victims in a real war.

Read the whole thing.

Christians Were Always Wrong To Stand With Rand

Let me clarify. They were wrong to ever stand with those who advocate the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Standing with Rand Paul on drones likely indicates a working conscience.

Let's review: Mike Huckabee claims that conservative Christians will leave the Republican party if the party changes its stance on same-sex marriage.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee — and ordained Southern Baptist minister — was asked if he sees the GOP ever pivoting and backing gay marriage.

“They might. And if they do, they’re going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk,” he responds.

In this instance, Huckabee sounds very much like South Dakota's own Gordon Howie:

The last straw would be the GOP supporting “gay marriage” (note: it’s NOT marriage). Christians would simple [sic] abandon the party and the GOP, which has seen decline in recent years would be destroyed.

Christians have been the first to “stay home” when the GOP ignores them on social issues. While there has been a small percentage who have been activists in the party for social issues, most Christians are inclined to “recline”… that is to say, stay home on the sofa. The party can’t afford to lose Christians. It’s why they have already lost the last two Presidential elections.

I'm politically displaced and an introvert.  I'm not sure I want a whole bunch of new folks walking the political desert with me, but I am no position to cast the first stone when it comes to walking away from political parties. I walked away from both of them years ago.

There is, however, a larger question to ask. What the heck were Christians, politically conservative, liberal, or moderate, doing with the GOP in the first place?

Remember the Idaho Republican legislator who wanted every student in Idaho to read Atlas Shrugged because the book turned his son in to a Republican. I suspect that the situation is not unusual.

Yesterday, Matthew Schmitz at First Things pointed out that Ayn Rand really, really hated C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian apologists of the 20th Century:

Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-meta­physical mediocrity,” a “pickpocket of concepts,” and a “God-damn, beaten mystic.” (I suspect Lewis would have particularly relished the last of these.)

These insults and more can be found in her marginal notes on a copy of Lewis’ Abolition of Man, as printed in Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her critical comments on the writings of over 20 authors, edited by Robert Mayhew.

Schmitz's post reproduces many of Lewis's original notes with Rand's marginalia.

Ed Kilgore points out that Ayn Rand would have disliked contemporary Christian conservatives just as she hated Lewis:

As I argued a while back in a long piece in Democracy on Rand and her contemporary influence, her boundless capacity for hatred was as often directed at religious conservatives as at “socialists.” And more than anything else, she most hated syncretism, the casual adoption by “second-handers” of bits and pieces of incompatible philosophical stances, particularly if it involved her own highly systematic thought

The question Huckabee and Howie now need to answer is why did politically conservative Christians ever side with the political party animated in large part by the philosopher who believes them to be mediocre abysmal bastards?

Quotation Of The Day: Politics And Christianity Edition

From C.C. Pecknold:

In our post-election reflections, Christians should be the ones asking the really substantial questions, not the ones asked at our very insubstantial presidential debates – but the questions we would want our children to ask: questions about existence, such as why there is something rather than nothing; about justice, and to whom it is owed; about truth, and making ourselves truthful; about the nature of goodness and how we can be formed in accordance with it. Questions like these are pre-political, but they matter for politics too. If these sorts of question whither, we will get the politics we deserve. Amongst ourselves as well as with others, we must be asking what it means to be a Christian in our excessive, polarized, political order.

HT: Rod Dreher

Quotation Of The Day: Link And Biblical Allusion Edition

From this Ed Kilgore post at The Political Animal:

CNN profiles luxury religious retreats. Jesus wept.

Amen

Quotation Of The Day: Yes I Am Obsessed With Pointing Out That All Christians Should Reject Ayn Rand Edition

From this Ed Kilgore post:

It has taken many decades of laborious revisionist work for the devout, scripturally literalist adherents of the faith whose God and Savior was quoted as saying, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God,” to become uninhibited enthusiasts for earthly success and wealth, and despisers of the “undeserving” poor. It’s the same revisionism, of course, that makes it possible for the Roman Catholic Vice Presidential Nominee of the Republican Party to fondly view Ayn Rand as an “intellectual influence,” instead of someone whose books any Christian should abjure like a Black Mass—someone whose fondest desire was to wipe both religion and altruism from the face of the earth.

I don't care if Ryan now claims she was only a small influence. Her work should never positively influence any Christian.

It's Sunday Morning So I'll Be A Voice Crying In The Wilderness

Ed Kilgore files the following while at the"2012 FAMiLY Leadership Summit, a gathering of Christian Right leaders and troops in one of its stomping grounds:"

Even poor old Chuck Grassley, who could barely stumble through his pithy remarks (“…the usurption of unconstitutional power by the President of the United States and his cohorts.”), got into the spirit, listing the propositions that a Romney/Ryan administration would promote “without apology:” “life begins at conception;” “gun ownership is an absolute right;” “choice in education is an absolute right;” “voter ID;” “marriage is between a man and a woman;” “American support for Israel,” and so on through the whole secular liturgy of the Christian Right.

I'll leave aside comments about Grassley's lack of eloquence, but I want to address a few elements of this"liturgy."

I grew up in a church populated by good country folk who might have thought the 5 solas  meant there was going to be a lot of special music during the Sunday morning service. They certainly would not have used the terms Sola Scriptura or Sola Fide even though they held beliefs encompassed by those doctrines. Nearly every Sunday morning sermon featured the phrase "thus saith the Lord." Sunday school instruction featured simple tools: know what you believe; know why you believe; back it up with chapter and verse.

I have long been confused, therefore, by "conservative Christians" who assert "gun ownership is an absolute right." What's the chapter and verse for that? I'm also hard pressed to think of any Biblical justification for voter ID.

I understand parents are Biblically enjoined to train children "in the way [they] should go." My father reminded me several times, "Son, you may have to know it for a test but you don't have to believe it." If parents aren't able to give their children that simple effective tool, will they be able to choose schools wisely? Also, the "school choice" argument is more about tax dollars or vouchers than it is about choice. Once again, I'm hard pressed to find scriptural support for "vouchers."

I'm equally confused by an assertion that Christianity demands complete and unequivocal military support for Israel. Even God didn't do that. Whenever ancient Israel broke the covenant, the opposing military won.

The use of the term "conservative Christian" prompts another question. That exclusionary term reminds one of the situation decried in I Corinthians 3:

1 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly —mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?

5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Is there really a difference between claiming "I follow Apollos" and "I am a conservative Christian"? Both identifications imply that that the follower is right and others are wrong.

The mixture of God and mammon than Kilgore documents prompts an important question. A little yeast leavens the whole loaf; how much political yeast is running through an allegedly Christian loaf?

The Differences Between Americanism And Christianity

James K.A. Smith draws some contrasts between Americanism and Christianity.  Writing about Mitt Romney, Smith points out,

 He is primarily interested in conserving America’s role as a hegemon (“preserving American leadership” is the guise under which he segues to talk about religion). And he enthusiastically adopts Sam Adams axiom that it’s not the specifics of piety that matters, but rather whether one is a “patriot.”

Smith claims that in that respect Romney is "like almost every other presidential candidate (from I don’t care which side of the aisle)."

Smith elegantly makes a point I've long believed:

 if one pays close attention to the actual theology at work here—that is, if one starts asking just which God is being invoked—one finds that it is a particular deity: “the divine ‘author of liberty.’” The god of the culture warriors has always been a generic god of theism (precisely like the god of the Founding Fathers): a “God who gave us liberty” (to do what we want). The “Creator” is a granter of inalienable rights and unregulated freedoms, a god who shares and ordains “American values.” If evangelical culture warriors had worries about Romney’s faith, his jeremiad today should confirm that he pledges allegiance to the same “God of liberty” that they do. We’re all Americanists now.

Like most Americans, I'm probably built my share of idols of  a "'God who gave us liberty' (to do what we want)."  Frequent short reflection brings one to the conclusion that one should join the small company that Smith describes:

some of us find it hard to believe in Americanism and its God of liberty. Some of us just can’t muster faith in the generic theism that is preached on the campaign trail, whether from the Right or Left. Some of us Christians have a hard time reconciling the Almighty, all-powerful, law-giving God of liberty with the crucified suffering servant born in a barn and executed at the hands of the elite. Some of us are trying to figure out what it means to be a people who follow one who relinquished his rights rather than asserted them, who considered submission a higher value than freedom. We serve a God-man who wasn’t concerned with “preserving leadership” and the hegemony of the empire’s gospel of freedom, but rather was crushed by its machinations for proclaiming and embodying another gospel.

A Minor Musing About An Atheist And Christian Intellectuals

Ross Douthat's New York Times tribute to Christopher Hitchens, the greatest essayist of the past 25 years, contains the following paragraphs:

Intellectually minded Christians, in particular, had a habit of talking about Hitchens as though he were one of them already — a convert in the making, whose furious broadsides against God were just the prelude to an inevitable reconciliation. (Or as a fellow Catholic once murmured to me: “He just protests a bit too much, don’t you think?”) This is not a sentiment that was often expressed about Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any other member of the New Atheist tribe. But where Hitchens was concerned, no insult he hurled or blasphemy he uttered could shake the almost-filial connection that many Christians felt for him.

Some of this reflected his immense personal charm, his willingness to debate with Baptists and drink with Catholics and be comradely to anyone who took ideas seriously. But there was something deeper at work as well. American Christian intellectual life is sustained today, to a large extent, by the work of writers very much like Hitchens — by essayists and journalists and novelists and poets, from G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis to W. H. Auden and Evelyn Waugh, who shared his English roots, his gift for argument and his abiding humanism.

These paragraphs prompt a couple of observations.  First, living a life that allows for debating Baptists, drinking with Catholics, and being "comradely to anyone to [takes] ideas seriously" should allow for a good deal of fulfillment, whether it be social, intellectual or spiritual

More importantly, Douthat correctly points out that British intellectuals nurture American Christianity's intellectual life.  That fact prompts a two simple questions:  Why do American Christians have to turn to the British for intellectual nourishment?  Why are there no new thinkers to replace Chesterton who died in 1936, Lewis who died in 1963, Auden who died in 1966, and Waugh who died in 1973?

I accept that Christian truths are eternal and unchanging, but its intellectual challenges are not.  It stretches credulity that no American Christian intellectual with the grace, wit, and intellect of Chesterton or Lewis has come forward to engage deconstruction or any other recent intellectual trend.  Unfortunately, no such Christian has emerged.

That sad fact is probably the best illustration of the sorry state of both America's intellectual life and American Christianity.

Christ Is In The X

Mental Floss corrects a common misconception:

Lots of people think that the X in Xmas is a secular watering down of the word Christ. You know, “we love to celebrate the holiday but don’t believe in Jesus,” sort of thing. However, this is not the case. The X actually comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of Χριστός. Now, if that’s all Greek to you, Χριστός, of course, means Christ. And the “mas” in Christmas, well, this is mental_floss, so I need not explain where that comes from, right?

Of course, facts don't matter is all one wants is to make religion a political football.

Sunday Morning Drop Quiz

Via Andrew Sullivan, an important question:  How much has to be true?  The original question came from this post.  A thoughtful response is here; the following Bible fact or fiction quiz comes from here.

Maybe we could break Brian's question down into some representative 'True or False' bite-size chunks.

• Adam and Eve were literally the progenitors of humanity.

• Satan is a fallen archangel in rebellion against God.

• There was a worldwide flood that wiped all life off the face of the earth in the time of Noah.

• God made the sun stand still so Joshua could wipe out his enemies thoroughly.

• God commanded bloody genocide against the Canaanites in the Old Testament.

• Daniel knew what was going to happen hundreds of years into the future.

• Key events in Jesus' life were accurately predicted in Isaiah, Psalms etc.

• Mary was a virgin when she fell pregnant.

• Jesus turned water into wine.

• Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form three days after the crucifixion.

Score ten for each which you feel are true (i.e. definitely historical), five for those you think might be historical but equally might not, and zero for those you think are patently false (i.e. pious inventions).
If you score 85-100, do you consider yourself a fundamentalist? If not, why not?
If you score 0, do you necessarily consider yourself a non-Christian? If not, why not?

When I teach mythology, I tell the young'uns that there's a difference between fact and truth.  The myths that we read may or may not be factual, but the stories may contain truths about the human condition or human nature.  Nearly all of he hero myths, for example, illustrate that pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall, a principle that seems true.

Looking at these 10 questions, the only one that HAS to be factual in order for Christianity to be true is the resurrection.  The rest can be metaphorically true without being factual and the central tenants will still hold.

Tangential Update (10/23/11, 11:05 am):  BW Schwartz at The Great Plains Observer provides an interesting summation of the world's religions.

A Minor Musing: Sunday Morning Coming Down

I've always found the Kris Kristofferson lyrics to "Sunday Morning Coming Down" a poignant expression of pain.  The gravelly voices of either Kris Kristofferson or Johnny Cash lent authenticity to poignancy.

On a Sunday morning sidewalk,
I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short a' dying
That's half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.

In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughing little girl that he was swinging.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singing.
Then I headed down the street,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing,
And it echoed through the canyon
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.

This morning, this essay reminded me that faith needs to be presented authentically.  The author concludes,

Despite all the affected teenage rebellion, I continued to call myself a Christian into my early twenties. When I finally stopped, it wasn’t because being a believer made me uncool or outdated or freakish. It was because being a Christian no longer meant anything. It was a label to slap on my Facebook page, next to my music preferences. The gospel became just another product someone was trying to sell me, and a paltry one at that because the church isn’t Viacom: it doesn’t have a Department of Brand Strategy and Planning. Staying relevant in late consumer capitalism requires highly sophisticated resources and the willingness to tailor your values to whatever your audience wants. In trying to compete in this market, the church has forfeited the one advantage it had in the game to attract disillusioned youth: authenticity. When it comes to intransigent values, the profit-driven world has zilch to offer. If Christian leaders weren’t so ashamed of those unvarnished values, they might have something more attractive than anything on today’s bleak moral market. In the meantime, they’ve lost one more kid to the competition.

While I was reading the essay, I had the misfortune to hear the following on ESPN.

Hearing that "prayer," reminded me of this passage from Luke 18.

⁹And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
 ¹⁰Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
 ¹¹The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
 ¹²I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
 ¹³And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
 ¹⁴I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

I wish that the pastor would have remembered that many watching of television or sitting in the stands may be hunting for jobs or have friends or families hunting for jobs.  It might have been good to remind everyone that II Corinthians 12 says,

 ⁹And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

 ¹⁰Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

I think I'll be thankful that I can listen to Johnny and Kris.

More on Dishonoring God: Rick Perry Edition

Apparently Rick Perry like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum is hearing God's call.  Apparently, I'm in a minority in believing that this claim constitutes hubris. In The Daily Beast, Michelle Cottle writes,

Better still, Perry’s assertion that he has been “called” also sends a signal that the governor is not unnaturally fixated on this whole presidential dream. He’s running because he sees it as God’s will, not because he needs an ego boost or a purpose in life. He is not, God forbid, personally ambitious—like say, the cold-blooded meritocrat currently inhabiting the White House or a certain flip-floppish ex-governor frantic to hold onto his front-runner status.

You could see Perry pushing this message in another quote to come out of his interview: “I’ll be real honest with you,” he told the Register. “I don’t wake up in the morning—never did and still don’t today—and say, ‘Gee, I want to be president of the United States.’”. . .

For many Americans, however, Perry’s professed ambivalence will be as irresistible as ice cream on a hot day. It is an enduring political irony that, despite being a nation of strivers, Americans find naked ambition distasteful. Especially in presidential candidates, visible hunger can be a turnoff, an indication that the pol in question is too desperate for the job, too power-hungry, or just plain needy.

 Reading between the lines, it seems that the claiming God's call is not only hubris, it's an effort to hide one's pride.  I always thought that God created humans to serve him; apparently, certain politicians believe God exists to serve their political advantage

More on Randians and Christians

Joe Carter who used to write at the Evangelical Outpost and now writes at First Things takes the critique of Ayn Rand and her philosophy's incompatibility with Christianity to a higher level.  He points out that Anton Lavey used Randian thought to create his Satanic Bible.

Perhaps most are unaware of the connection, though LaVey wasn’t shy about admitting his debt to his inspiration. “I give people Ayn Rand with trappings,” he once told the Washington Post. On another occasion he acknowledged that his brand of Satanism was “just Ayn Rand’s philosophy with ceremony and ritual added.” Indeed, the influence is so apparent that LaVey has been accused of plagiarizing part of his “Nine Satanic Statements” from the John Galt speech in Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Devotees of Rand may object to my outlining the association between the two. They will say I am proposing “guilt by association,” a form of the ad hominem fallacy. But I am not attacking Rand for the overlap of her views with LaVey’s; I am saying that, at their core, they are the same philosophy. LaVey was able to recognize what many conservatives fail to see: Rand’s doctrines are satanic.

Carter goes on to bolster the idea that supporting Randians just because they may claim to have some of the same views that Christians share is a fool's errand.

But to be a follower of both Rand and Christ is not possible. The original Objectivist was a type of self-professed anti-Christ who hated Christianity and the self-sacrificial love of its founder. She recognized that those Christians who claimed to share her views didn’t seem to understand what she was saying.

Many conservatives admire Rand because she was anti-collectivist. But that is like admiring Stalin because he opposed Nazism. Stalin was against the Nazis because he wanted to make the world safe for Communism. Likewise, Rand stands against collectivism because she wants the freedom to abolish Judeo-Christian morality. Conservative Christians who embrace her as the “enemy-of-my-enemy” seem to forget that she considered us the enemy. [emphasis mine]

Carter also shows a bit of wit in his take down of conservative Christians who adhere to Rand.  First,

You can replace the pentagrams of LeVayian Satanism with the dollar sign of the Objectivists without changing much of the substance separating the two. The ideas are largely the same, though the movements’ aesthetics are different. One appeals to, we might say, the Young Libertarians, and the other attracts the Future Wiccans of America.

Later,

But we are sustaining a climate in which not a few gullible souls believe she is worth taking seriously. Are we willing to be held responsible for pushing them to adopt an anti-Christian worldview? If so, perhaps instead of recommending Atlas Shrugged, we should simply hand out copies of The Satanic Bible. If they’re going to align with a satanic cult, they might as well join the one that has the better holidays.

Perhaps some conservative Christians should try to worry more about the wolves in sheep's clothing in their midst rather than Muslims or gays.

Will Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann Please Stop Dishonoring God!

The New York Magazine's "Daily Intel" reports that Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachman all claim that God has told them to run for President. The article reports that Cain has heard the call at least twice, once by text.  Cain also claims that God cured his cancer so that Cain could run for President.

Cain told the crowd about his battle with cancer in 2006, saying he's been "totally cancer free" for the past five years.

"You want to know why? God said, 'Not yet Herman,'" Cain told the crowd. "God said, 'Not yet. I've got something else for you to do.' And it might be to become the president of the United States of America."

As for Santorum, his wife,

Karen Santorum told CBN's David Brody in May about her husband's decision to run for president, "It really boils down to God's will. What is it that God wants? ... We have prayed a lot about this decision, and we believe with all our hearts that this is what God wants."

Michele Bachmann

. . . told World Net Daily in 2009, she would never run without God's personal endorsement:

"If I felt that's what the Lord was calling me to do, I would do it," she answered. "When I have sensed that the Lord is calling me to do something, I've said yes to it. But I will not seek a higher office if God is not calling me to do it. That's really my standard.
"If I am called to serve in that realm I would serve," she concluded, "but if I am not called, I wouldn't do it."

Bachmann recently confirmed that she has, indeed, "had that calling and that tugging on my heart."

I'm not a theologian, but I have a difficult time understanding how the Being who created and sustains the universe that humans inhabit needs the help of a mere mortal to lead one nation on one small planet in one galaxy among millions of galaxies.  Further, claiming that God has called them to a higher purpose implies that they are uniquely blest because God has called them.  In a perverse way, each claims to deserve glory and power because God has said so.

David Platt in Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream reminds readers that God has said that humans exist for God's glory.  God doesn't exist for their glory.  Platt quotes Ezekiel 36:22-24 (page 68).

‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes. 

Platt then goes on to assert, "We are not the end of the gospel: God is.  God centers on himself . . . ." (page 71).

Finally, and I admit I may be being cynical here, people who run for President seem to desire power and the use of that power.  Platt illustrates how Christianity illustrates a different view.

The gospel betokens us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and trust his power. . . .

As long as we achieve our desires in our own power, we will always attribute it to our own glory (46).

Cain, Santorum, and Bachmann have it backwards.  They are centering on themselves by claiming to have a divinely appointed to run for President of the United States.  In doing so, they make themselves laughingstocks and exhibit profound hubris.

A Modest Proposal--Can Americans Stop Being Stupid And Just Get Along

Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican wants to declare the first weekend of May "Ten Commandments Weekend" in order "to recognize the significant contributions the Ten Commandments have made in shaping the principles, institutions, and national character of the United States."

Perhaps, Gohmert  like Patrick J. Deneen believes, "Our return to a distinctively modern form of paganism is nearly complete."

Lane Moore worries that "it seems far more likely that this resolution could very well make it to the floor for a vote and maybe even father still."  Moore hopes for a day "when members of Congress finally come out and clearly state that we are 'One nation under God, A Christian God, Period. Amen.' instead of slowly creeping over to the microphone every few months to whisper it in our ears."  Chris Rodda also worries that the resolution will pass and goes through the resolution and gives some historical perspective.

I don't know if Moore and Rodda support "a Seattle school approved . . .'hunt' for round objects containing sweets and surprises on the condition that they be called “Spring Spheres."  If they do, I'm positive Moore, Rodda, and the teacher who tried to eliminate the use of the term "Easter egg" don't want to endorse ANY religion and tried to avoid using the term because the Easter has its roots in the worship of a pagan goddess.

Old English Ēostre (also Ēastre) and Old High German Ôstarâ are the names of a putative Germanic goddess whose Anglo-Saxon month, Ēostur-monath (Old English "Ēostre month"), has given its name to the festival of Easter. Eostre is attested only by Bede, in his 8th century work De temporum ratione, where he states that Ēostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, and that feasts held in her honour during Ēostur-monath had died out by the time of his writing, replaced by the "Paschal month". The possibility of a Common Germanic goddess called *Austrōn- was examined in detail in 19th century Germanic philology, by Jacob Grimm and others, without coming to a definite conclusion.
Linguists have identified the goddess as a Germanic form of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn, *Hausos, some scholars have debated whether or not Eostre is an invention of Bede's, and theories connecting Eostre with records of Germanic Easter customs (including hares and eggs) have been proposed.

On the other hand, I'm a bit surprised any Republican supports the 10 Commandments.  That injunction: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, . . .nor any thing that is thy neighbour's" might alter Americans' materialistic attitudes and hurt the country's economic recovery (Exodus 20:17).

Maybe I'm projecting a bit here.  A 10 Commandments weekend might interfere with plans to hang out with @coralhei and observe "a Plato weekend."  Of course, I, selfishly might want to take some time celebrate Free Comic Book Day and watch The Kentucky Derby.  The first weekend in May is crowded with activities.

Of course, there's nothing in the 10 Commandments forbidding Plato, comic books, or horse racing.  Unfortunately, the commandments have no prohibitions against willful ignorance either.  As Deneen reminds us, "[t]he old paganism had the virtue of openness to Christian truth – the new paganism aims at destroying even that openness."

In an effort to promote a little openness and honest communication, I have the following modest proposal.  Let's not have have a 10 Commandments weekend.  The Republic has survived without it.  Let's keep calling those eggs kids look for every spring Easter Eggs.  Heck, let schools have kids get outside and look for Easter eggs.  Our Democracy seems to have checks so Americans won't start worshiping a pagan goddess, even thought Neil Gaiman's American Gods makes worshiping her sound like fun.  I don't think the jelly beans inside the eggs have the magic powers to make anyone a Christian either.

Why Atlas Shrugged When Jesus Died

Big Boy Blogger Andrew Sullivan posted this entry last Friday.  Cut and pasted in its entirety, I think it's worth far more as a Sunday morning sermon, especially in an era when Christians have let themselves be uses as pawns of the economic elites.  All I can add to Mr. Sullivan's post and the post he links to is a loud Amen!

Ayn Rand vs Jesus Christ

It's not an easy co-existence, Mr Gingrich. Some contrasts:

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith,” - I Timothy 6:10.

Or this:

“It is one’s own personal selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.”
 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Or this:

“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
 “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

It is possible to read the Gospels as entirely a personal and not political message, and certainly not view Christianity as a short route to socialism. But it is impossible even in one's personal life to be a Christian and to be a Randian. The whole point of the Gospels is that Rand's value system leads to profound misery and spiritual loss. And the whole point of Rand is that Nietzsche was onto something.