"Responsibility does not end at conception"

In one of the recent issues of NR, the writer mentions then-Senator Obama's 2008 Father's Day message, delivered at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago. He talks at length about fatherhood and how African-American communities are in very short supply of fathers, and how that contributes to a general moral decline, among other things. And he's right: fatherless homes breed violence and broken lives. I'm with him 100%. He goes on to say,

...we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child -- it's the courage to raise one.

This is all fine and good. But what catches my eye is the statement, "we need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception." So he's admitting, at least for the purposes of his audience, that life begins at conception, or at the very least, that conception begins the process of something that takes on life eventually (as odd as that sounds). This is not out of character for him. Remember the flap about his Pennsylvania town hall stop?

"I got two daughters... I'm going to teach them first about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

Here, he also admits that rather than being a blob of tissue, that thing in the womb is a baby; a human being. And this also says that he is perfectly comfortable with snuffing out the baby so that his daughters don't have to be "punished" (I've spoken on this at length before). So really, President Obama, responsibility can end at conception, or the second trimester, or whenever you want it to. Why?

a trendier, more hip, more fresh God

I've pretty much always gone to church because it was expected of me. Christians go to church because that's just what Christians do. I go to church because my family goes to church, because we're supposed to or something. If it were really up to me, though, I'd forgo going to church and do something more constructive, like finger paint.
Why is this, you may ask? Well, as many of my close friends can tell you, church really hasn't been that great of an experience for me. If you could sit through some of the services that I've sat through over the past several years, you'd probably emerge in the same boat as me. And I'm not talking about the stereotypically "fundamentalist" kind of church where the pastor will say that he doesn't believe in watching movies, and that he "doesn't go to that movie house." That's laughable, but not necessarily wrong. I'm talking about churches that imbibe the Kool-Aid of Word-Faith health and wealth "God's gonna send me checks in the mail because I told him to because he promised that I'd be rich" kind of thing. I'm talking about churches that will say, from the pulpit, that the church is the Body of Christ and that if you leave a certain prescribed church, you are divorcing yourself from the authority of the Body. I'm talking about churches where we all get to hear about how much money the church is going to need for the year, and that IF we don't get your offerings, we won't be able to add on the $2.3 million shopping mall-sized expansion so that we can do more cool things that make us feel good, like sell T-shirts and bumper stickers. Churches that only care about how many kids they draw in to youth group instead of how many of those kids are going to get something meaningful out of it, like a firm foundation of truth (so that once they get out into the real world, they won't become atheists). And so on.

But it's not just church that's grinding my gears. I went into the local Christian Bible bookstore the other day with my beautiful girlfriend, and perused some of the books there at my own peril. I discovered, somewhere in Rob Bell's "Sex God," that maybe unmarried couples who are living together and sleeping together are really actually married according to God's standards, since sex unites male and female. I found out that God wants me to be rich and famous from one of the newer Creflo Dollar books. And I also discovered that Joel Osteen kinda looks like John Edwards.

(pause)

It would help if Christianity had some decent standard-bearers instead of the New Agey waifs that have gained popularity in recent years. I've heard that 'Plan B', a book by Anne Lamott, is a really good book and that I should read it. I also know that she believes that everyone is going to Heaven and that unborn babies aren't actually human beings at all. I've heard that Rob Bell is a cool cat, and that his DVD series, NOOMA, is pretty sweet. Which is true; he's a hip dude and the few episodes of NOOMA that I've seen are immensely interesting. He also thinks that we can find truth in every religion. And don't even get me started on Rick Warren's incredibly superficial-looking Purpose Driven Magazine. Or Greg Boyd, who believes that no violence is justfied, that God doesn't want you to defend yourself or your family from harm, that to repent and turn to God is to completely forsake violence for any and all reasons, and that "we must be willing to die at the hands of our enemies." It's a good thing that this idiot wasn't around during the Holocaust, because he sounds an awful lot like a more famous proponent of non-violence...

Liberal politics are constantly pushed as faith. Megachurches seek to be hip and trendy at the expense of having a soul. Being blunt and forceful in your messages takes precedence over Ephesians 4:15. God is reduced from the all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite-personal Being that He is to being just another cat with some serious chops (think Miles Davis without the woman beating). Acts 16 gets turned on its head: "The jailer asked, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' Paul and Silas replied: 'You must dig the cut of Christ's jib.'"

I'm sick of church. I'm sick of hearing that if I don't make my choices in accordance with one guy's interpretation of God's teachings, then my choices are controlled by evil spirits. I'm sick of hearing that God is a cosmic Santa Claus. I'm sick of hearing that "God changed Pepsi to Coke and found my fucking car keys." I'm sick, sick, sick, sick. I just want to experience God, and worship Him. I'd love to be able to go to a church and actually feel God there instead of feeling people.

Maybe I have legitimate complaints against church and popular Christianity. Maybe my disillusionment is justified. Maybe I'm just cynical, jaded, and angry. Maybe I'm just an evil Republican. Maybe I need to just be friends with everyone and stop being so darn intolerant.
However you want to spin it, I am a broken, messed up human being that is starving for God, and most of that is due to my own mistreatment of the guy. I haven't exactly been the most faithful over the past few years. But is it so much to ask that other people are honest about it too?

Tiller

I've been thinking long and hard about how I feel/think about the murder of George Tiller (you know, the abortionist in Kansas who performed 3rd trimester abortions). I've come to the conclusion that while his murder was an awful event and it was completely wrong and entirely unjustified, I can't bring myself to shed too many tears about the guy. Yes, that's probably not the most Christian thing to say, and I'm sure that there's going to be at least one person who will read that and think to themselves, "what a hypocritical, heartless bastard." Oh well.
Let's look at the facts. This guy was an abortionist, for starters. He clearly didn't think that unborn babies were valuable lives, if they could even be considered 'lives' at all (and if he did, he didn't think that they had rights, which in my mind is worse than not thinking someone human at all. Does the three-fifths compromise come to mind? Slavery? Hmm...). He also performed 3rd trimester abortions, which only a scant few people in this country do. It's even illegal in some states. So we're talking about babies that are as close to being born as you can get without waiting until the mother gives birth and then ripping their brains out, or injecting them with saline, or tossing them in a bucket where they can slowly starve to death, or whatever; pick your poison. And this guy did them because, as a commenter on Big Hollywood dryly put it, the mother "can't fit in her prom dress."
And -irony of ironies- Tiller was murdered at his church. Think about that for a minute: a 3rd trimester abortionist was serving at a church. The other churchgoers seemingly didn't have any qualms about such a guy attending their church, much less being one of their ushers. What he was doing in a church is beyond me.
So what's my conclusion? George Tiller was a despicable human being, and his murder was precisely that, but I'm not too torn up about it, for better or worse. It's awful hard to feel sorry for a guy who wantonly killed babies. The only thing that really worries me is what the Obama administration is going to do in the aftermath of this situation. Judging from the recent DHS memo about returning vets, anti-abortion advocates, and anti-illegal immigration activists all being susceptible to committing terrorist acts, this just might be the witch-hunters' ace in the hole. Naturallly, it would be very cynical of them to use this as an excuse to crack down on abortion protesters and organizations nationwide, and you can bet that there would be a giant backlash if the slightest rumors of such surfaced. But anything is possible.

ROTC: the unfolding saga

Okay, so I'm a month late in posting this (in truth, I didn't even know about this letter until tonight), but an actual servicemember sent a letter to the Spectator in support of ROTC, citing concerns about the faculty opposition that I detailed in my article. Vigilance!

IMHO: Incubus and their spotty lyrics

I’m a big Incubus fan. I have nearly all of their CDs. I love them because musically, they’re nothing short of awesome, especially when it comes to Mike Einziger’s guitar work. However, they fall incredibly short in a key area, namely lyrics. Brandon Boyd can’t write lyrics to save his life. Yeah, he strikes gold with songs like 11am, Pardon Me, and Monuments and Melodies. Contrast them with some of his not-so-good efforts, like Stellar (“I need you to see this place, it might be the only way that I can show you how it feels to be inside you”), A Kiss To Send Us Off (“bring your mouth and respective irreverence”), and of course, the anti-Bush hit, Megalomaniac (“Hey megalomaniac, you’re no Jesus, yeah you’re no fucking Elvis”). Their newest album, Light Grenades, is the best (or worst, depending on your viewpoint) example. From the opening Quicksand (“sometimes you fall in love and touch the sky, sometimes it’s like falling in quicksand, I’m somewhere in between”) to the terrible Dig (“we all have a sickness that cleverly attaches and multiplies… you’ll act as a clever medicine”) and Earth To Bella (Part 1) (“you think you’ve got it all figured in”), it becomes obvious that Brandon should either retake high school English or let someone like Ben Kenney, who is a good lyricist, take the pen and notepad for a few tracks. Related to this shortcoming is the fact that Incubus is also one of the more glaring examples of poor English that I have in my library. Yes, I know that songs don’t have to follow every convention of grammar, because a song is different from a term paper, but with these guys it just gets out of hand. Take the line from Earth to Bella and add that to the pre-chorus of Leech, “I’m kicking myself that I shared spit with you” (what the…?). I could go on and on for many more paragraphs, but will leave off with this doozy from another Light Grenades track, Love Hurts: “Love hurts, but sometimes it’s a good hurt.” Uh, no Brandon, not really. Unless you’re Chris Brown.