Why Gun Control Is Racist

It's usually a cold day in the devil's domain when I agree with Cornel West on much, but I have been saying this for a long time:

Cornel West recently expressed his belief that the concern Americans have about mass murder reflects a racist lack of concern with the real problem with murder, which is largely black on black.

I left my post below as comment on a post at Outside the Beltway several days ago. West's comments are a good hook to post it here:

If gun controllers were honest and familiar with the facts, they would admit that America does not have a “gun problem,” we have a gang problem.

America’s horrific murder rate is a result of the transformation of major American cities into Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda and El Salvador. Our murder rate now largely consists of criminals killing criminals.

As David Kennedy, the head of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, put it, “The majority of homicide victims have extensive criminal histories. This is simply the way that the world of criminal homicide works. It’s a fact.”

The elephant in the room that almost no one on any side of guns issue will admit is that criminal gun use is a race-based issue. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (see links listed at end), despite a fraction of the total population relative to whites, blacks kill one another in higher absolute, not just relative numbers. The homicide rate among American whites is almost the same as among Canadians. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims are killed by other blacks (86 percent for whites, showing that interracial murder is pretty rare, for whatever that is worth.)

The gun problem in America today is almost exclusively about criminal use of firearms by (mainly) young men who illegally obtain firearms specifically to use in criminal acts. And the majority of of those criminal shootings are blacks shooting other blacks.

That is why I say that the gun control movement is not merely uninformed, it is also inherently racist because it’s only when white grade schoolers or theater goers or US Representatives are shot to pieces that the media and gun controllers get energetic. The two to three Sandy Hooks that occur every week among the black populations of America never draw a protest from the Left.

The entire purpose of the gun control movement is not to stop shootings generally. It is to stop shootings of white people. Not one single measure proposed by Sen. Feinstein or coming forth from VP Biden will have the slightest effect on the gun-homicide rate among blacks, as even Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has said:

However, McCarthy acknowledged aiming at assault weapons misses the mark when dealing with Chicago’s gang violence. The weapon used is generally a handgun and rarely is it purchased through legal channels. McCarthy wants to target straw purchasing, which is when legal gun buyers will purchase a weapon and then let it loose in the illegal market.

Straw purchasing, of course, is already illegal.

But the Left doesn't care what cops like McCarthy say. It’s only the "chocolate kids," as Cornel West puts it, getting killed. As long as it stays inside the inner cities it matters not. But when it takes place in white-bread Connecticut or Aurora, Colo., something must be done!

Links:

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/tables/oracetab.cfm

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/weapons.cfm

http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/#view=all

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3106338:

USA Homicide Rates

Gun homicides and gun ownership listed by country
CDC FastStats Assault and Homicide

American Digest observes:

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind

"

'via Blog this'

Dying to win the lottery

The odds of winning the lottery are even worse than the math says in the long term.

(NEWSER) – The case of a Chicago man who died suddenly weeks after a big lottery win is now being treated as a murder, police say. Urooj Khan scored a $1 million scratchcard win in June and died the day after the check for his winnings was issued the following month, CNNreports. The medical examiner initially declared the death to be from natural causes but after a relative urged doctors to look into the case further, tests revealed that a lethal dose of cyanide had killed the 46-year-old.

New Answer to Fermi's Paradox?

Radiation From Deep-Space Could Accelerate Alzheimer’s - Business Insider:

Physicist Enrico Fermi postulated that once a civilization attained even rudimentary space flight, it should be able to reach any point in the galaxy in only five million years. The Milky Way, however, is billions of years old.

"So," asked Fermi, "where is everybody?"

One original answer I have seen is that all the alien races we assume are out there are too busy overeating fast food and watching electronic porn to journey millions of light years through space for no good reason.

Now a more technical reason may be in the offing. Turns out that interstellar space flight probably will just plain kill you:

 

If you get radiation-induced Alzheimer's just going to Mars, it surely means death going to an enormously-farther star.

The Professional Poor, the Idle Poor and the Poverty Traders

A Boston street scene from the early '80s:

She stood to the left of the entrance for part of the day and to the right for the remainder. You didn't know when she'd shift, but she always seemed to be in your path as you came out of the building. 

Going for some coffee? 

"Spare a quarta?" 

Going to lunch? 

"Spare a quarta?" ...

She got a quarter out of about every fifth person. I once estimated she made about $75 a day, tax free. That worked out to a take homeless of $18,750 a year in 1983. Not bad when you considered that she had zero overhead.

And so operate the Professional Poor, a class of people with whom I have, unfortunately, an intimate familiarity. The Professional Poor are people who make their careers and their incomes out of always being one rent payment away from eviction, one tank of gas away from not being at their dying mother's bedside, one meal away from starvation, one unfilled prescription away from deathly illness. Their vocation is begging. Their client base is anyone who looks likely, but especially pastors, church people and (I don't know how they can tell this, but they can) the guilty-feeling well to do.

The Professional Poor are not lazy. They work hard for their living. The Boston woman was on her feet with almost no break for probably 12 hours per day. I distinguish them from the Idle Poor, who are the welfare class, the people both indigent and indolent, the people being referred to these days are the Entitlement Class. (And I distinguish both from the true Working Poor, of whom I wrote in 2003.)

The Professional Poor plan their days and their calls or sales routes (for they are selling their poverty to you) as carefully as the most successful businessman. They are masters of timing, to wit:

Christmas Eve, 45 minutes before I begin the Christmas Eve service. Through the door by my office walks a haggard-looking woman of indeterminate age (anywhere from 45-75) whom I peg as one of the Professional Poor before she's taken two steps inside the door. They all have a look that gives their game away when you've been dealing with them as long as I have.

I must say that this woman, whose name I purposely don't recall but whom I'll call Clara, had an original beg. She wanted a place to stay with her husband overnight, being too poor to rent a hotel room. She wanted to stay in my home. Or the home of another church member. Or would one of us simply rent her a hotel room? Then they'd continue her journey in the morning. To her sick mother's house. In Wisconsin. (I live in middle Tennessee).

Of course, the Professional Poor can recognize the poor-weary as easily as we can recognize them, so it took her only halfway into her carefully-rehearsed pitch to understand she was dealing with a professional, too. So: time to take it to a higher level - out comes the Ziploc quart-size bag crammed full of prescription bottles and the earnest explanations that her sick husband in the car must have enough rest. And proof that they really are Wisconsin residents: here is my Wisconsin driver's license!

The hopeful light in her eyes dims when she hears my reply: "We do all of our direct charitable assistance through two local agencies. One is twenty-five miles away but the other is not even two miles down the street. However, I have no idea whether they are still open on Christmas Eve at this hour. I will be glad to give you directions."

The last thing the Professional Poor want to do is deal with a charity agency. Agencies  know every scam out there and even know the names of the Professional Poor who do them. Agency workers view the Professional Poor with all the compassion of a Swiss banker. 

Clara knows she's not making the sale. She makes a final, desperate push: "Oh, we don't have enough gas to make it that far." (So you intend to drive to Wisconsin how?)

I say nothing because there is nothing to say. Without a word she suddenly bags her props and walks out the door. Like any astute business woman, she knows when to cut her losses. On to the next client.

I once gave to all who asked. Now I give to none. Once a year I write checks to funds for widows and orphans of police, firemen, and soldiers killed in the line of duty. Beyond that, I find I can no longer spare a quarta. And when I hear, in the back of my mind, the old Depression anthem "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" I find that although I can spare it, I no longer want to give it. 

It has taken decades of ceaseless hectoring but at long last my compassion account in the Bank of Human Kindness is overdrawn. I'm tapped out. I still try to care but I find, if I am honest, I couldn't care less.

I still care for the truly beaten down, but I have no compassion for the Professional Poor. I never give to anyone who comes to my church asking for money; we do assist with utilities or grocery purchases, but never on a cash basis. And by never I mean, "never." (What part of "never" don't you understand?) There are countless businesses I do not patronize, so when the Professional Poor come to sell their edge-of-disaster poverty to me, my wallet stays put.

Not everyone agrees with me on this, including other Christians of devout faith and true compassion. Some have made a compelling case that we should give without inquiry or distrust and let God sort it out in his good time. I understand their point.

I reply with two points of my own. First I relate what happened in the late 1990s one county away. A small church there established a cash fund to give to people in need. There was a limit per recipient, about $40 or so, but whenever someone came by, the pastor (according to news reports) would take $40 from the file cabinet and hand it out.

One day a man came by and asked for money. "I will give you forty dollars," the pastor said. "I'll take it all," said the man, pulling out a gun. He murdered the pastor and took all the money.

So I never give money to beggars. They swap information about who is loose with a sawbuck and where. Actually, they usually sell the information to each other since they see each other as marks just as much as they see you. Any church or business that starts handing out cash or freebies one day will find double or triple the opportunities by the end of the week.

My second point is that if I had unlimited resources, then of course I could give everyone who came by everything they asked for. Heck, if I had unlimited resources, I could give them all a new Mercedes-Benz. But I don't. And every time I give to the Professional Poor, I have less to give to the truly needy. (The "truly needy" is of course a cliche now, but they really do exist and we are obligated to help them.)

At least, though, the Professional Poor are working for a living. I'll credit them that even if their living in the scam, the con, fraud and deceit.

Not so with the Idle Poor, who are described by Peter Cove, who, "a half a century ago ... dropped out of graduate school and enlisted as a foot soldier in America’s War on Poverty." 

Today, I’m still on the front lines, working to move people out of dependency and into employment. But with an important difference: I've become fed up with the useless policies that I once supported, and I’m trying to change the strategy of our bogged-down army. ...

[T]he government’s unprecedented expenditures failed to bring about the decline in poverty that Johnson had promised. Instead, they made things worse. Neither city hall nor I comprehended that the “community action” organizations on which we lavished taxpayer dollars would entrench dependency by urging people to get on the welfare rolls. War on Poverty funds paid for social workers, community activists, and lawyers to organize the poor, but these organizers, far from lifting poor people out of dependency, helped them sign up for more—and more expensive—welfare programs. For instance, the National Welfare Rights Organization urged single black mothers to protest the welfare system’s eligibility restrictions, and the organization’s goal was to flood the system with new clients. 

The activists succeeded beyond their wildest imagination. By the end of the 1960s, during a period of economic prosperity and low unemployment, one out of every seven New Yorkers was on the dole. By 1975, War on Poverty spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) had tripled, and the percentage of poor families’ income supplied by welfare had risen from 7.5 percent to 14.1 percent. Under the pressure of the advocates, government programs emphasized “welfare rights,” postponed self-sufficiency, supplied unproven and expensive services, and left most welfare clients out of the workforce. That’s perhaps the main reason that, as some pundits quipped, “in the War on Poverty, poverty won.”

The Idle Poor do not work for their largess. In fact, working is counterproductive to them because government dollars stop if they get a job. So their income is free and they act like it.

Welfare recipients took out cash at bars, liquor stores, X-rated video shops, hookah parlors and even strip clubs — where they presumably spent their taxpayer money on lap dances rather than diapers, a Post investigation found. 

A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records from January 2011 to July 2012, obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information request, showed welfare recipients using their EBT cards to make dozens of cash withdrawals at ATMs inside Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn; the Blue Door Video porn shop in the East Village; The Anchor, a sleek SoHo lounge; the Patriot Saloon in TriBeCa; and Drinks Galore, a liquor distributor in The Bronx.

The Idle Poor are being played, too, and some may even know the scam for which they are the product, for they are being sold no less surely, though less harshly, than those on the block in 1840s Charleston. The Idle Poor are the sales merchandise of the Poverty Traders, the "social workers, community activists, and lawyers to organize the poor."

Poverty, you see, is big business. The federal government paid out almost $440 billion last year alone in welfare payments. Add to that just under $300 billion that Americans gave to charity privately. With that much money available to tap, con artists and scammers are inevitable.

Once we institutionalized poverty, we professionalized it. Creating poor people and keeping them poor is the deliberate policy of the Obama administration. You need consider only the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or "food stamps."

By the end of August 2012 (the most recent data), there were 47.1 million Americans on food stamps, a new all-time record high. ... 

Since Obama took office, the number of Americans enrolled in SNAP has risen by more than 45 percent.

For which this president will infinitely blame George W. Bush. The Poverty Professions are here to stay. Forever. By design.

Update, Jan. 2016: "High-Tech Homeless Man In Detroit Accepts Credit Card Donations On A Cell Phone"

Truer words were never spoken

"The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for."

"When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra."

Secrets Your Pastor Can't Share in a Sermon

Secrets Your Pastor Can't Share in a Sermon:

UM Rev. Lee Stevenson, whom I have known for many years, posted the link to this on his FB page. Warning to lay people - it is potentially upsetting! But of the nine "secrets" the writer says your pastor won't share with you, I pretty much agree with eight. Sorry, I won't tell you which eight.

Read at your own risk.

Time to recover what fornication means

Touchstone Archives: Sexual Iconoclasm:

In his book Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers(Oxford University Press), sociologist Mark Regnerus shows that abstinence-pledge programs are most effective with younger adolescents, and that the "appeal of the pledge diminish[es] as the sex drive increases with age." Regnerus demonstrates that Evangelical Protestant teenagers aremorelikely to engage in sex while unmarried than their Mormon, Jewish, and even mainline liberal Protestant peers. 

Regnerus also demolishes the common notion that these virginity pledges are the driving force in what many of us have seen anecdotally for years—namely, Evangelical teenagers clinging to a "technical virginity" through sexual practices other than intercourse. Regnerus acknowledges that the "technical virginity" charade happens, but he says it has nothing to do with seeking to avoid some kind of religious guilt. It's instead a "future-oriented, self-focused (but not anti-family), risk-aversive, parent-driven (and subtly class-oriented)" middle-class morality. 

To put it bluntly, teenagers of whatever religious persuasion in contemporary America are more likely to delay intercourse and to substitute oral sex or some other form of gratification for intercourse because they are trying to avoid risks to their future economic well-being. They are "technical virgins" because they want to go to college rather than because they want not to go to hell. As conservative Evangelicals grow more socially and economically ascendant, Regnerus predicts, they will be more likely to adopt the same forms of sexually tolerant risk management focused on economic viability. 

This brings us back to language. The talk of "abstinence" and "waiting" shores up the implicit risk management behind the cultural milieu. It is not just in our public witness that we adopt the culture's grammar; we do so in our own churches and parishes. How often do we urge teenagers to maintain chastity to be consistent with their "values" and to avoid bad consequences to their health, their future marriages, or their walk with God? These consequences are no doubt real, but why would it seem so awkward to say what the Scripture says quite straightforwardly—that fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10)? 

One does not have to be some sort of wild-eyed "hellfire and brimstone" revival preacher to recognize that the apostles and prophets seem insistent that sexual immorality brings upon itself the wrath of God (Rev. 21:8).

Read the whole thing.

"The Narcissism Epidemic"

Once upon a time, a wise man wrote the following advice:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility esteem others more than yourselves.

Well, that's gone the way of the dodo in America. BBC News - Does confidence really breed success?

About nine million young people have filled out the American Freshman Survey, since it began in 1966. 

It asks students to rate how they measure up to their peers in a number of basic skills areas - and over the past four decades, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of students who describe themselves as being "above average" for academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability and self-confidence.

This was revealed in a new analysis of the survey data, by US psychologist Jean Twenge and colleagues.

Another study by Twenge suggested there has been a 30% tilt towards narcissistic attitudes in US students since 1979.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines narcissism as: "Excessive self-love or vanity; self-admiration, self-centredness."

In The Narcissism Epidemic, co-written with Keith Campbell, Twenge blames the growth of narcissistic attitudes on a range of trends - including parenting styles, celebrity culture, social media and access to easy credit, which allows people to appear more successful than they are.

"What's really become prevalent over the last two decades is the idea that being highly self-confident - loving yourself, believing in yourself - is the key to success.

"Now the interesting thing about that belief is it's widely held, it's very deeply held, and it's also untrue."

Finally:

Am I a narcissist?

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory asks 40 questions, then ranks you on a narcissism scale

• Take the narcissism test

I wonder how many test takers will see their scores and post on Facebook, "Look how well I did on the narcissism test!"

Dig Finds Evidence Of Another Bethlehem : NPR

Dig Finds Evidence Of Another Bethlehem : NPR:

Thousands of Christian pilgrims streamed into Bethlehem Monday night to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It's the major event of the year in that West Bank town. But Israeli archaeologists now say there is strong evidence that Christ was born in a different Bethlehem, a small village in the Galilee.

About 100 miles north of where the pilgrims gathered, shepherds still guide their flocks through green unspoiled hills, and few give notice to the tucked-away village with the odd sounding name: Bethlehem of the Galilee. But archaeologists who have excavated there say there is ample evidence that this Bethlehem is the Bethlehem of Christ's birth.

"I think the genuine site of the nativity is here rather than in the other Bethlehem near Jerusalem," says Aviram Oshri, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority which has excavated here extensively. He stands on the side of a road that now cuts through the entrance to the village. It was the construction of this road that led to the discovery of the first evidence that Bethlehem of the Galilee may have had a special place in history.

"It was inhabited by Jews. I know it was Jews because we found here remnants of an industry of stone vessels, and it was used only by Jews and only in the period of Jesus," Oshri says.

He also found artifacts which showed that a few centuries later the community had become Christians and had built a large and ornate church. He says there is significant evidence that in early Christianity this Bethlehem was celebrated as the birthplace of Christ. The emperor Justinian boasted of building a fortification wall around the village to protect it. The ruins of that wall, says Oshri, still circle parts of the Galilee village today.

He thinks many early scholars would have concluded that this Bethlehem was the birthplace of Christ.

"It makes much more sense that Mary rode on a donkey, while she was at the end of the pregnancy, from Nazareth to Bethlehem of Galilee which is only 7 kilometers rather then the other Bethlehem which is 150 kilometers," Oshri says.

He adds there is evidence the other Bethlehem in the West Bank, or what Israelis call Judea, was not even inhabited in the first century.

Paula Fredriksen, an American scholar of the historical Jesus, says that early Christianity only started to pay attention to the Judean Bethlehem in the fourth century, when the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

According to the Old Testament, Judean Bethlehem was the City of David where the future messiah would be born. Fredriksen says that it would make sense for early Christianity to focus on that Bethlehem

"The Bethlehem that's the only Bethlehem that matters for the tradition is David's Bethlehem," Fredriksen says. "And David's Bethlehem quite specifically is in Judea."

Oshri draws similar conclusions. He says that for devout Christians, the story of Jesus and his birth is inextricably linked to the internationally known city of Bethlehem.

How does Oshri think Christians would react to finding out that Bethlehem that they thought about is wrong?

"I don't think it will have any influence," he says. "The tradition is one thing. People will go on believing. And I can understand it."

Two moments of miracles

The light of the solstice pierces to the heart of the tomb at Newgrange, and then, soon after, the Light of World arrives. Two moments that remind us of the many manifest miracles of God. Reminders that no winter is without end and that The Gift is given to us again. If we can but receive it.

Gerard Vanderleun

 

Why is Christmas in December? - Slate Magazine

Why is Christmas in December? - Slate Magazine:

The reasoning goes that the growing church, recognizing the popularity of the winter festivals, attached its own Christmas celebration to encourage the spread of Christianity. Business historian John Steele Gordon has described the December dating of the Nativity as a kind of ancient-world marketing ploy.  ...

This alternative explanation is sometimes deployed to dismiss the notion that the holiday had pagan roots. In a 2003 article in the journal Touchstone, for example, historian William Tighe called the pagan origin of Christmas “a myth without historical substance.” He argued at least one pagan festival, the Roman Natalis Solis Invictus, instituted by Emperor Aurelian on Dec. 25, 274, was introduced in response to the Christian observance. The pagan festival “was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians.” According to Tighe, the pagans co-opted the Christian holiday, not the other way around.

But there seem to be mathematical reasons for the Dec. 25 date that rest upon modern computational science, not legend.

Update: Many of the detailed explanations of these planetary and stellar phenomena, such as this one, do not seem to account for the fact that Dec. 25 on our calendar today is an altogether different date in the ancient world. December 25 on our calendar is 13 days further along than on the Roman Julian calendar used at the time the Pope officially designated Dec. 25 as Christmas Day. The original Dec. 25 date then corresponds to Jan. 7 on our calendar. So to be historically picky about it, the Russian church and others that still use the Julian calendar for religious dating are correctly celebrating the date on Jan. 7.

But wait! There's more! When modern astronomers say that Jupiter's "full stop" occurred on Dec. 25, 2 BC, which Dec. 25 do they mean, Gregorian (modern) or Julian (ancient)? They mean modern. If Jupiter's progression/retrogression transition was in process on Dec. 25 Gregorian, that means that the Magi arrived in Bethlehem on Dec. 12 or so Julian.

They did not get there the day Jesus was born. We know from Matthew that Jesus was born in a barn and laid by his parents in a manger, or feeding trough, after birth. Yet Matthew 2 clearly states, "On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, .. ."

How old was Jesus by then? We have insufficient information to know. Presumably, Joseph, Mary and Jesus could have moved from the barn to the house the day after Jesus was born. It's not far fetched to imagine that room for a newborn and parents was made somehow.

One clue, however, lies in that Herod directed the Magi to come back and report to him once they found the one whom the Magi had referred to as the "one who has been born king of the Jews."

The Magi did not go back to Herod. Herod, never one to countenance potential rivals to his throne (he had even executed his own sons), ordered soldiers to Bethlehem:

[H]e was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

In my view, the best interpretation of this narrative is that the Magi had no idea specifically when Jesus was born, but based on their sequence of astronomical observations concluded it had to have been within the two years prior to their arrival at Herod's court. Another key may be that Matthew quotes the Magi as referring to Jesus as "born king of the Jews," not "newborn" king of the Jews. Hence, Herod's order to slaughter boys up to the age of two.

It is important, from an historical and biblical perspective, though not necessarily from a practical one for the Church, to confirm Dec. 25 (Julian, anyway) as the date the Wise Men got to Bethlehem, not the date Jesus was born. That date, I'm afraid will likely forever remain unknown.

An Advent sermon after Sandy Hook

Delivered on Dec. 16, 2012

I have said before that the season of Advent is not about Christmas per se. It is about the coming of Christ into the world in his totality of all his offices. Advent is supposed to be to Christmas as Lent and Holy Week are to Easter – a time of spiritual introspection and self examination.

That’s why the traditional passages for Advent are not exclusively about what happened one holy night in Bethlehem. We move to that story during the church season of Christmas, but by then our culture has moved on to New Year’s looming revelry and football bowl games. And most of us have moved right along with it, too.

Understanding that Advent is not merely about Christmas is why two Sundays before Christmas the lectionary passage is the foreboding tidings of John the Baptist. His news of the Advent of Christ is a warning. It is not filled with singing angels or dazzled shepherds.

Luke 3:7-18:

   7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
   10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?"
   11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
   12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"
   13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."
   14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
   15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." 18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

That is our passage, this third Sunday of Advent, two days after a 20-year-old man – I shall not honor his name from this pulpit – murdered his mother and then broke in to Sandy Hook Elementary school where he gunned down 12 first-grade girls and eight boys plus six women. I hope you understand that the sermon I originally had planned for today is one I cannot give.

I try not to rely on headlines for sermon topics. That is a sort of lazy way to preach, I think. A preacher’s first calling is to proclaim the resurrection and to try to help the congregation discover biblical truths. People are astute enough to connect the Scriptures with their own lives. But Friday was a national punch to the gut. The horror beggars description.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27a). In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, we have to ask ourselves, Whose voice are we following?

In the coming days the editorialists and TV commentators will have a lot more to say. I do not expect their offerings to be much different from what they said after Aurora, Colorado’s theater massacre or Virginia Tech’s massacre or ... well, pick one. The media’s talking heads will recycle the same things they said before. We’ll hear a lot about America’s gun culture, and all the talk will be about guns and not about the culture.

I want to talk about the culture:

This movie was to open in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, the
day of the killing rampage in Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Warner Bros. pulled the opening

After 1999's massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, Boston Globe editorialist John Ellis wrote,

Ours is a culture that glorifies violence, profits from it, sells it with the most advanced technology known to mankind. Violence bounces off satellites in outer space and beams into every American home, every hour of every day, every month of every year.

Researchers say that each week American children converse with their parents for about 40 minutes but watch television about 1,500 minutes. The average teenager spends nine hundred hours in school per year and fifteen hundred hours watching television. These hours do not include the time kids may spend listening to  heavy metal or “gangsta” rap, which glorifies killing cops and raping women, or playing computer games both violent and occultic, or watching violent movies on video or in theaters.

The Parents’ Television Council says that,

by the time an average child leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 other acts of violence.  By the time that child is 18 years-of-age; he or she will witness 200,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders.  One 17-year longitudinal study concluded that teens who watched more than one hour of TV a day were almost four times as likely as other teens to commit aggressive acts in adulthood.

The Hollywood gun culture:
Business Insider reprints part of an AskMen piece on
"The 99 Most Desirable Women Of The Year."
Here is no. 99, Bérénice Marlohe, who plays Severine in Skyfall.

Eight out of ten television producers say there is a link between television violence and real-life violence. Wrote Boston Globe’s Ellis,

In the 1980s, evangelical groups tried to lead boycotts against entertainment and media companies that produced and broadcast gratuitously violent fare. Their efforts met with some success at the grass roots and nothing but scorn from media elites. Hollywood’s contempt for public concern about the ceaseless stream of violent media was perfectly captured in a quote from Ted Field, co-founder of Interscope. ‘You can tell the people who want to stop us from releasing controversial rap music one thing,’ said Field: ‘Kiss my ‘blank.’

We call ourselves a Christian nation. Yet events like Sandy Hook keep occurring and force us to ask: if America is so Christian, and Christians are redeemed and transformed, why is our culture so filled with destruction?

That’s where John the Baptist comes in. The Advent he foretells is not one of Jesus meek and mild. It is of a righteous judge whose “winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” It is a Christ who has already placed an axe at the foot of the unfruitful tree and is getting ready to swing it.

How dare we sing Christmas carols as those 20 children are about to be buried? God save us from pride in personal piety. “Scriptural holiness entails more than personal piety; love of  God is always linked with love of  neighbor, a passion for justice and renewal in the life of  the world. We insist that personal salvation always involves Christian mission and service to the world” (United Methodist Book of Discipline).

In the week before Jesus was crucified, he entered the Temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers. People must have been highly offended at his actions. Who did he think he was? What right did he have to impose his views on others? Jesus never worried about what people would think about him. Enough was enough! It was time for direct action.

Have we finally had enough now? Are we willing to overturn the structures of death and violence in our society? Are we willing to be called vile names for the sake of Christ? Are we willing to ignore the outraged howls of the Ted Fields of the world in the name of Christian activism? Or would we rather listen to the agonized cries of "Rachel, weeping for her children"?

Whose voice are our kids listening to? The massacres at Sandy Hook and other schools didn't happen for no reason. We cannot pretend they are unconnected to our culture. We have to raise our voices as Christian disciples, calling to our children and our nation, offering voices of life, of hope, of peace. We have to raise our voices in judgment against death dealers who promote violence and breed despair, especially in our children.

No more chickening out by hiding behind mealy-mouthed phrases like, Who are we to judge?

No more moral relativism that Christian values for life and peace are really no better than others.

No more copping out with excuses that we’re too busy with work right now.

It’s time to stare into our own souls and ask ourselves what do we really believe, what do we really value. It’s long past time to make our voices heard. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world,” wrote Paul (Rom 12:2). “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules. . .?” (Eph 6:12).

If we just hunker down and do nothing but take care of ourselves, we have no right to shed a single tear when the next Sandy Hook happens, and one after that, and another one after that. At funerals of children shot down in the library of another school, remember: we knew it could happen, and we did nothing.

John tells us to flee from the wrath to come and bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not say to ourselves, 'We are church members in good standing'; for I tell you, God is able make church members from empty beer cans lying on the roadside. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

He's talking about you and me, church people. You and me. So how can we sing this cantata and our carols on this day?

We sing as an act of defiance against this world’s covenant of sin and death.

We sing to announce a covenant of life more abundant.

We sing to acknowledge that we of the church are under judgment for our fruitfulness of discipleship, or its lack.

We sing in repentance for our failures to obey God.

We sing to praise God for a Savior who redeems the world.

We sing to say that there is a Light that shines even in darkest night and that the darkness cannot overcome it.

We sing because not even the worst that this would can do can make us mute our voices to announce that "Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father – the Prince of Peace!"
______________________________

A closing thought: I will be much more sympathetic to calls for more gun control when those same people are just as adamant about culture control. Sort of like what Glenn Reynolds has said in another context: "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis." But the Left has actually been working on culture control for a long time:

Maybe we need to ask in the manner of Dr. Phil, "How's that been working out for us?"

The Mayans missed

Newfound Asteroid Buzzes Earth Inside Moon's Orbit | Space.com:

As near misses go in space, this was razor close:

A newfound asteroid gave Earth a close shave early today, zipping between our planet and the moon just two days after astronomers first spotted it.

The near-Earth asteroid 2012 XE54, which was discovered Sunday (Dec. 9), came within 140,000 miles (230,000 kilometers) of our planet at about 5 a.m. EST (1000 GMT) Tuesday (Dec. 11), researchers said. For comparison, the moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 240,000 miles or so (386,000 km).

A 60-second exposure of near-Earth asteroid 2012 XE54
streaking through the sky on Dec. 11, 2012, during a close
flyby that brought it inside the moon's orbit.
CREDIT: Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes, Remanzacco Observatory 

Astronomers estimate that 2012 XE54 is about 120 feet (36 meters) wide — big enough to cause substantial damage if it slams into Earth someday. An object of similar size flattened 800 square miles (2,000 square km) of forest when it exploded above Siberia's Podkamennaya Tunguska River in 1908.

Why I am an armed pastor

Recently I purchased, at a licensed dealer's store, a Ruger semiauto pistol, model LC9 with Lasermax, right. Ruger's page is here.

It is probably the smallest 9mm parabellum semiauto pistol you can buy, at least it is nearly so. It holds a maximum of seven rounds in the magazine plus one in the chamber, "seven plus one" in handgun parlance. I chose this model over a larger, greater-capacity model, because of its size.

For me, a larger pistol would have just turned into a museum piece. I do have a couple of guns suitable for home defense, one being a semiauto shotgun that I bought for sport shooting, which makes a pistol somewhat needless. As someone said, if you have both a pistol and a shotgun, the  pistol's purpose is to enable you to fight your way to the shotgun.

However, I did not buy those guns, nor the LC9, with the aim (heh!) in mind of defending myself against home intruders or criminals when I am away from home. The small Tennessee town where I live is rural in character. There are extremely few crimes against persons here. Crimes against property are the norm (and not many of them)  but those rarely involve personal confrontations. Legally-armed men and women around here are practically normative and evildoers darn well know it. So if someone decides to burgle my house he will 99-percent certainly do it when I am not home. Same with other homes.

So why the small 9mm semiauto? Back in 2009, Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man posted, "Muggers aren't the only reason to be armed."

A former college professor and his wife were apparently attacked and killed by nearly a dozen dogs along a rural road where their bodies were found mutilated, authorities said Monday. 

Preliminary autopsy results from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation showed Sherry Schweder, 65, likely died of injuries suffered in a dog attack, Oglethorpe County Sheriff Mike Smith said. Autopsy results for her husband, Lothar Karl Schweder, 77, were not yet available, but Smith said it's likely he  was also attacked by dogs because the scene was so grisly. 

Smith said officials were going to round up at least 11 dogs seen in the area in northeastern Georgia, where the couple's mutilated bodies were found Saturday morning by five passersby.

Last year, my wife and I were out for a long walk in the local streets around our house, with Wesley, my daughter's 14-pound dog. You would not believe the number of really big dogs people keep around here. And they all want to eat Wesley for a snack.

Less than a half mile away lives a guy who keeps five (count 'em, five!) pit bulls in his back yard. It is fenced, but on that day one got loose and instantly streaked across the yard to attack Wesley when we unknowingly walked by. Cathy had the leash, and she quickly picked Wesley up. The pit bull leaped up to bite Wesley in two and was pawing and snapping all over Cathy. I was trying to kick the dog away but Cathy kept backing away (understandably enough) and the pit kept pursuing. I finally connected with a solid hit under the pit's chin and he dropped. Just then the owner appeared and took control of the pit. We were pretty shaken, frankly.

I thought at the time that if I had been armed that problem would have been solved pretty quick. I did order two hardwood walking sticks with a metal jabbing tips and we have always carried them since. I also began carrying a locking blade fighting knife honed to razor edge.

Then last summer my next-door neighbor, "Fred," was in his front yard when two pit bulls ran from across the street and charged straight at him. He ran for his front porch and had to kick one dog away before he got inside. He grabbed his 20-ga. shotgun and went back to the porch. The dogs charged him again and he shot one (just birdshot in the gun). They both ran away. Fred went inside and called the cops. Animal control located the dogs as belonging to residents across the street.

My town has a low crime rate. I am not really worried about a human attacker but I am legitimately concerned about the four-legged kind. The vast majority around here are penned and under control, but it only takes one or two that are not, as we and my neighbor came very close to finding out the hard way. With the walking sticks and the knife, I would have to do hand-to-hand combat with an attacking animal (or hand to paw, as it were). That is not a good plan.

Armed with the 9mm, we are a lot more secure on our walks with a buffer zone of maybe 25 feet around us, which is about the maximum effective range of the LC9 with its three-inch barrel. We still carry the sticks and certainly do not want to harm someone else's animal, but we will not be victims when we are able otherwise. (Actually, I'd feel most secure carrying a light machine gun, but one does what one can.)

(BTW, Peter, cited above, is a combat veteran turned Catholic priest, now retired, who goes armed, too. He spent some time as a full-time prison chaplain and told me, "If you begin prison ministry on Monday, by Friday you'll be getting a carry permit.")

Some other thoughts about going armed:

1. I carry a pistol to defend myself and my loved ones, not to defend you. A carry permit does not make me the Fist of Justice. It does not give me police powers. If I face criminal danger in public, my number one choice will be to flee, not fight. Having no other choice, I will draw or use my pistol to save my children, my wife, myself. Not you.

2. I will not put my life at risk to protect property. Nothing I own is worth risking death for. Nor is it worth killing for. So I will not shoot someone just to protect property. But if someone attempts to rob me or invade my home, my default setting is that they also mean to do me and/or my family harm. That by no means indicates that I will automatically engage the threat. It does mean that the threat should not count on my forebearance.

I have thought pretty hard and long about going armed in light of my pastoral vocation. Back in 2003, I posted a long piece exploring the issues related to a controversy in the Battle of Baghdad when a US Army chaplain took over firing a .50-caliber machine gun during an intense firefight. The bearing of arms by chaplains is strictly forbidden in the US military, admitting of no exceptions. I explored not only the military considerations but mainly the theology of why this is so, dating back to Thomas Aquinas.

According to Prof. Darrell Cole in "Good Wars," Aquinas reasoned that

. . . bishops and clerics cannot be soldiers because these occupations cannot "be fittingly exercised at the same time." Aquinas offers two reasons why. First, warlike pursuits keep clergy from their proper duties. In other words, their participation is unlawful, not because war is evil, but because warlike pursuits prevent them from doing their jobs.

(Note the Navy's requirement, above, that chaplains "must at all times, both in time of war and in time of peace, be engaged exclusively in religious duties.") Cole continues:

Second [according to Aquinas], it is "unbecoming" for those who give the Eucharist to shed blood, even if they do so without sin (i.e., in a just war). Unlike Calvin, then, Aquinas finds the duties of clergy to be more meritorious than the duties of soldiers. However, this does not mean that, in Aquinas' view, the soldier's duties have no merit. Rather, he employs an analogy to make quite the opposite point: it is meritorious to marry but better still to remain a virgin and thus dedicate yourself wholly to spiritual concerns. Likewise, it is meritorious to fight just wars and restrain evil as a soldier, but more meritorious still to serve as a bishop who provides the Eucharist to the faithful.

Here is one root of the custom against, later the prohibition, of chaplains bearing and using arms: to wield the sword in a just cause, justly employed, was no sin, but for clergy both to wield the sword and to offer the Eucharist (Lord's Supper) meant that the chaplain had abandoned his particular calling as a disciple of Christ. Both Reformer John Calvin and Aquinas (and for that matter, Martin Luther), held that soldiering justly could be considered a form of the Christian ministry of charity. But at least in Catholic theology, the battlefield forces a choice: the same person may not offer the Eucharist in ministry and also fight as a soldier. The two ministries were not contradictory, but they were incompatible in the same person.

Obviously, the circumstances of a civilian minister are different than of a military chaplain. In orthodox Christian theology, deadly force is justifiable (though deplorable) only in self defense or defense of helpless, innocent victims of aggression and even then may be used only when there is no realistic alternative.

This is the basis of Just War theory, which also dates in modern form to Aquinas. This line of thought also informs my personal rules of engagement, especially why I won't shoot to protect property and why using gunfire to defend my family or myself is an in extremis measure only. Aquinas' theology also could be used to justify me using gunfire to defend others away from my home but frankly, I do not use it that way.

If you are an adult, no one is more responsible for defending you than you. If you find yourself unarmed and needing defending, it is because you decided to be. Bluntly put, I am not going to put my life at risk to subsidize your stupid decision. I might be morally justified in defending you with lethal force, but I am not morally obligated to do so.

I also have wrestled quite a bit with Aquinas' insight that "it is 'unbecoming' for those who give the Eucharist to shed blood, even if they do so without sin" (i.e., in direct self defense). If I did have to defend myself, having no safe escape from someone meaning me lethal harm, and took that person's life, could I continue in sacramental ministry? Should hands that have shed blood, even guilty blood, continue to offer the body and blood of Christ? I simply do not have an answer. But I also came to realize that I'd have to be alive to confront the dilemma. I pray the day never comes. But you can bet that I see no moral or religious dilemma in shooting an attacking pit bull dog.

Update: Jim S. points out that in his state of Illinois, carrying a pistol even to defend against wildlife is verboten.

My only counter-argument is that perhaps he might consider also defending poor tourists from the only state stupid enough to still forbid carrying a pistol either openly or concealed. Oh, and he also might want to defend widows and orphans. God seems pretty cool with that throughout the Bible.

Which prompted me to leave this comment:

I did ponder the question of what to do if children are in danger because of criminal acts, such as the Oregon mall shooter this week. While the question's answer is highly situational, I think that I would engage in order to give the kids time to escape.  

I would not want to face myself in the mirror each day afterward knowing that I had done nothing to save the truly innocent and defenseless. Sometimes all courses of action are undesirable, but, within the law, it is sometimes true that "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." You have to do what you know you can live with, and what you know you can face Christ with unafraid. 

Somewhere in here is a nexus between "Who is my neighbor?" and "no greater love." And there is no way to know where that nexus is until the time.

Update: I could just faithfully adopt this little old lady's tactic.

Endnotes: Ruger makes a somewhat smaller pistol called the LCP in .380 ACP caliber. This caliber is also known as a "9mm short," having the dimensions of 9 X 17 mm. But "9mm" by itself means a round 9 X 19mm, referred to as the 9mm parabellum or 9mm Luger.

To make things even more confusing, the .380 is not actually a .38-caliber round. It and the 9mm parabellum are exactly .355 inch in diameter. So is the .357 magnum round. And both the .38 ACP and the .38 Super rounds are .356 inch in diameter. The round that actually is .357 inch in diameter is called the .38 Long Colt. Does any of this make sense? Actually, no.

 

Abe Lincoln was a racist bigot

Spielberg’s Upside-Down History: The Myth of Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment by Thomas DiLorenzo:

Despite her reputation resting on her book, Team of Rivals, about Abraham Lincoln's presidency, Doris Kearns Goodwin should not be accorded the accolade of an actual Lincoln scholar. The opening quotes of this article show why:

"Armies of scholars, meticulously investigating every aspect of [Lincoln’s] life, have failed to find a single act of racial bigotry on his part."~ Doris Kearns-Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, p. 207. 

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people . . . . I as much as any man am in favor of the superior position assigned to the white race."~ Abraham Lincoln, First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Ottawa, Illinois, Sept. 18, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln vol.3, pp. 145-146.

That Lincoln deeply opposed slavery cannot be gainsaid. That he ever thought African Americans (they could truly be called that, then) should or even could gain legal, social or moral equality with whites is simply laughable. However, that did not distinguish him from about 99 percent of American whites, North or South, of his day. In fact, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln endorsed the first proposed 13th amendment to the Constitution, called the Corwin Amendment after Ohio Republican Thomas Corwin. This amendment, which was never ratified, specifically forbade altering the Constitution in any manner that would enable the Congress to interfere with slavery "within any state." The Corwin amendment's wording was ridiculous, but its intent was clear: slavery was to be enshrined in the Constitution forever. Why would Lincoln endorse such a measure? Also in his first inaugural, he stated flatly,

The Union must be preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be employed.

Preserving the Union was more than Lincoln's policy goal. It was his fetish, a religious-type quest. The South's argument in favor of its secession was based on a contract view of the Constitution. The Constitutional contract, they claimed, had been broken, hence they could withdraw from the Union if they wished. Lincoln's theoretical foundation for destroying the Southern states to compel them to stay within the union was based on his elevation of the Declaration of Independence above the Constitution. The Union, he held, was a binding covenant between the states, not a contract, and that covenant could neither be negated nor nullified. There is no doubt that for Lincoln preserving the Union was vastly more important than the rights of blacks. Writing to influential New York editor Horace Greeley in August 1862, Lincoln explained the relationship (Lincoln's italics):

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. 

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

As writer DiLorenzo explains, "So, go and see Spielberg’s Lincoln movie if you must, but keep in mind that it is just another left-wing Hollywood fantasy."

 

Why Jews Don't Believe In Jesus, why Jews reject Jesus

Why Jews Don't Believe In Jesus, why Jews reject Jesus:

A good explanation which begs and answer. When I find the time to answer it, I will. Even so, there are some serious biblical and theological errors in this piece. See whether you can spot them. More later!

"Abandoned Porn"

That's the provocative name of a site devoted to photos of abandoned structures and artifacts. Two images that I found striking:

Hat tip: Bayou Renaissance Man.

 

Ten Steps to Deal With Inward Drift in Established Churches

Ten Steps to Deal With Inward Drift in Established Churches

Read the whole thing.