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As for me, I’ll admit I’ve vacillated.  I’ve cried out for mercy, beseeching God to give us a second chance to get it right.  When it felt like I was asking for thirtieth, fortieth and fiftieth chances ad nauseum, I’ve tried to come into agreement with whatever means God saw fit to bring us back to our right minds.  I’ve always stopped short of praying outright for His judgment to fall – which probably makes me weak, I know.  I’ve heard other people describe the Capitol as a cesspool and other names not fit to print and they seem to have no trouble decreeing calamity over the city, but I immediately get flashes of actual people suffering under those calamities and so, no matter how frustrated I get with this place, I can’t seem to quite give up on it.

Lately I’ve taken to praying like Abraham: peradventure there lack five of the fifty righteous, wilt thou destroy the place for the forty and five that art therein?  Sometimes I even roll my Rs like Alexander Scourby.  Actually I don’t.  But I do ask Him to save the city for the sake of the righteous remnant, whoever and wherever they are. 

But today as I was driving home praying the Abrahamic prayer, I realized that I don’t even know what a “righteous remnant” is.

I thought this because I’ve been studying different uses of the words “righteous” and “righteousness” in the Old Testament lately and I’m having a hard time really understanding what they mean.  I’ve even looked up the definitions in Strong’s Exhausting Exhaustive Concordance to see if I can glean some insight from the original Hebrew.  Which of course is completely ridiculous since I don’t have the faintest idea how to read Hebrew.  Nevertheless, I’m in the process of doing a thorough – and completely amateur – word study because the Father apparently has good things in store for the righteous and I wanted to know what that means…and how to be one.

Have you noticed that when people talk about the “remnant” they usually lower their voices as if they’re referring to an elite cadre of secret-ops-super-saints?  While that sounds really cool, I don’t actually know that any of those kind of saints reside in my city – well maybe one, but one person does not a remnant make.  Not even Abraham himself dared to negotiate for fewer than ten.

And counted among that righteous remnant was Abraham’s nephew Lot.  You know, the one who was given his pick of all the land…and chose Sodom.  Which just goes to show there’s hope yet.

Germany is not unique in its failure to assimilate immigrants.  My cousin has lived in Paris for well over twenty years and is still considered an outsider.  She may speak the French language and eat French food, but she will never actually be French.

If however, she were to arrive in New York tomorrow, she could proudly claim to be American without ever having eaten apple pie or donning a pair of Levis.  I would argue that she could even claim to be an American without having set foot on American soil.

Although the uber-universitized bemoan America’s alleged lack of culture, the reality is that Americans possess something far more profound than a common taste in food or dress or even language that has held us together these past two hundred thirty years.  We are bound by a set of principles – life and liberty, justice and equality – that transcend man’s tribal tendencies.  Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are the anthems of a meta-culture that is united by allegiance to ideas, not artifacts.

For all its claims to civilization, Germany, like France and every other European nation, is eminently tribal.  Germans possess a German-ness that marks them for life…or until they emigrate to America.  While immigrants to Europe may be able to get by for a time living side-by-side with their home-grown neighbors, they will never be able to share a common heritage.  They will always be outsiders.

I find it highly amusing that Europeans who are quick to loathe all things American have toyed with the idea of creating an umbrella under which their immigrant masses may huddle.  They even created their own “Union” – a promising start – but could never quite agree on one constitution.  Instead, they have a 479 page treaty that lays out various benefits and obligations that accrue to member states.  Note to the EU…we’ve tried this sort of confederate approach before and it ended badly. 

By the way, the preamble to the Treaty of Lisbon that governs the EU begins with the immortal words: “His majesty the King of the Belgians…” followed by the head of state of every other European nation.  No mention about people as such, only as subjects of monarchs.  Real progressive.

How does ours go again?  Oh yeah…”We the PEOPLE.”  Not the people of England or France or Spain, but the people of the United States who established this country to do away with artificial allegiances and instead pledge themselves to an ordered liberty that encompasses all who abide by its precepts.  Have we formed a perfect union?  No.  Tragically, our history betrays the human tendency to prefer confederacies that elevate contrived distinctions above unions founded on certain self-evident truths – with disastrous consequences. 

Still, I would argue that our union is more perfect because it is founded on the premise that we are created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.  You can be born in Ankara and still lay the same claim to the ideas articulated in the Constitution as your neighbor born in Dubuque.  Your allegiance to those ideas makes you both equally American. 

For the record, the endowed by our Creator part is essential to equality.  It is also self-evident, though apparently easily overlooked.  If our rights are derived from any human source – i.e., the state or one’s community or a monarch – they will quickly devolve into privileges to be disseminated for personal or political gain.  In other words, we would return to King George’s England where multi-kulti failed long before Chancellor Merkel pronounced it dead.

The beautiful thing about America is that anyone who holds to her self-evident tenets can claim her for their own.  That is meta-culture and it is still the last best hope of earth.

To borrow from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., hard cases – and sloppy opinions – make bad law.  Decisions based on personal sentiment rather than sound legal reasoning have been used to support all kinds of undesirable outcomes.  In law as in life, the end does not justify the means.

The thing is, if Judge Walker and the opponents of Prop 8 had exerted a bit of effort, I think they could have come up with some cogent and defensible legal arguments to support their conclusion.   I can respect a well-argued position, even if I disagree with it.  But why sweat the legal stuff when it’s so much easier to write about your feelings.  I guess Robert Fulghum was right…clearly all the judge thought he needed to know about case law, he learned in kindergarten.  I’m surprised the decision didn’t come with drawings.

And for the record, Jerry Brown should be fired for failing to do his job, which is to vigorously defend the laws of the State of California, regardless of his personal views.  I still can’t figure out what he was so afraid of…unless he thought he might actually win his case.

Check out this jaw dropper: 

“Civil law has always been supreme in defining and regulating marriage…Any clerics, ministers, rabbis, et cetera, that were accustomed to performing marriages only do so because the state has given them the authority to do that.”   

Wait a minute…I thought Al Gore invented marriage?  

Seriously though, if the state is the sole and final arbiter of the intimate, life-long relationship that is the basis of human society then Toto…we’re not in Kansas anymore.

A friend of mine was fired yesterday.  She worked on Capitol Hill, so it goes without saying that her work environment was challenging and her boss demanding.

She had no warning she would be let go.  No notice she had done anything wrong; she still doesn’t know why she was dismissed and likely never will.  She showed up for work as usual and some time mid-afternoon she was called in for a meeting and told to pack up her desk.  Her boss didn’t even have the fortitude to fire her himself.  He left town and called in his henchmen to do the deed. 

It was beyond harsh.

I didn’t know what to tell her.  Wanting to help in some way, I called my friend, intending to tell her how unjustly she had been treated and what kind of recourse she may have and how I would be willing to go to the mat for her…and she stopped me cold.  She said she had been asking God to help her forgive her boss and those who terminated her because “they know not what they do.”  

I was stunned.  This was absolutely not how people in DC handle being fired.  They rant.  They rage.  And then they write best-selling tell-alls. 

They do not go quietly and leave thank you cards on their way out.

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal …” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

When people say things like “it’s all about the process, not the end product,” I assume they are lazy and/or incompetent.  I have never been able to distinguish process from product.  The notion of a good, healthy process without a quality product at the other end is completely foreign to me.  Doesn’t even compute.  I mean what’s the point of the process if not to produce the product?  That doesn’t mean the integrity of the process is unimportant.  I don’t believe the end justifies any means, as the end product reflects the totality of the process.  But I do think I have been willing to take certain shortcuts so long as no one noticed when they looked at the outcome.  This is especially true in my job, where often the final product isn’t even acknowledged.  But that is not a Kingdom, God-oriented perspective.  He takes notice of every detail in His Kingdom, especially those things done in secret.  I need to view the process, not just the product, as my offering to my King.  While my efforts may go unnoticed by the world, they are important to Him.  Ultimately, it is the little things – the details of the process – that shape my character.

The other piece to this is that I am so obsessed with the visible outcome that I don’t really allow God in the process at all – unless of course I encounter some problem along the way that sends me running to Him, begging Him to fix the mess I’ve created.  Involving Him in the process – keeping it between me and my God – means that I leave the final product to Him.  After all, He is now invested in the outcome.  It’s not just my reputation on the line.  Of course, as was so astutely put this weekend, God is confident in the durability of His reputation.  He has even been known to drag His reputation – along with that of His servants – through the gutter (think Elijah shacking up with the widow of Zarephath or Ezekiel lying around for over a year and then using human excrement as fuel to cook his meals).  Okay, so maybe now I see why I may have been reluctant to hand the process over to God.

When you hold up a sign opposing abortion, there is a good chance you will get some feedback.  For reasons I have yet to figure out, seemingly rational people will get in your face to tell you that a mother has a right to pay to have her unborn child killed and evacuated from her womb when and where she wants.  Some of them will even argue that it is the duty of the federal government to make taxpayes pay for a woman’s right to a dead baby.

The pregnancy center where I worked would hold an annual walk for life to raise money to provide women with better options than dead babies.  And inevitably we would come across protesters who berated us for denying women the choice to have a dead baby if that was what she wanted.  I always found these encounters surreal.  I mean who can actually look you in the eye and argue in favor of dead babies? 

Apparently, some of the people who occupy space next to you in the pew. 

Just ask Todd Bullis who was kicked out of his church because he refused to repent for bringing up the problem of intentionally making dead babies.  Because that might make us uncomfortable.

Now I agree that it’s infinitely more fun to sing worship songs and listen to inspiring sermons and just about anything else, including getting my teeth drilled, than talk about abortion.  But just because we pretend the problem isn’t a problem doesn’t mean it isn’t.  Because it is.

The real problem is that if we work too hard at convincing ourselves that we don’t want to see something we would prefer not to see, eventually we lose our sight altogether.  That’s how vision works.  It’s an all-or-none proposition.  You either open your eyes and see the world as it is and deal with it or live with your eyes shut and, over time, forget how to see.  “Their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes…”

Our attempt to see selectively – to see only that which pleases us – actually makes us blind. 

And those of us who call ourselves the church in America are blind.  Not only…but especially…to abortion. 

We know what abortion is.  When it comes to prolife activities, we’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt.  Yet after 37 years following the national legalization of abortion, we don’t seem to have made a dent.  There are almost as many dead babies now as there ever were.

I can’t fault Mr. Burris for wanting to shake the church out of our slumber.  But holding a sign that says the equivalent of “look here” may not be espeically effective if your audience is blind. 

More: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10041905.html