Good Reads 03/30/18

What I’ve Been Reading, Listening to, and Watching this Week

Counting the Cost: Republicans Turn Their Backs on Promises to Defund Planned Parenthood

What Jamie Dean (World Magazine) Says: “A few hours after President Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill to keep the federal government funded through September, satirical news website The Babylon Bee ran a stinging headline: “Republicans Clarify That By ‘Defund Planned Parenthood’ They Meant ‘Give Them $500 Million Every Year.’” The fake-news-for-laughs carried an unfunny truth: After months of lofty promises from Republicans and Trump to defund the nation’s largest abortion business, the GOP-controlled Congress passed a bill that keeps the funds flowing. And President Trump signed it. Planned Parenthood performed 321,384 abortions last year.”

What Chuck Schumer Says: “We don’t have the House. We don’t have the Senate. We don’t have the presidency. But we produced a darn good bill for the priorities we believe in.”

My Take: I didn’t Vote for Donald Trump, in part, because I didn’t know if I could trust him. He was saying some conservative things, but we all knew–and know–that he wasn’t–and isn’t–conservative. Who was to say he wouldn’t jump in bed with the Mitch and Paul and Kevin and most of the rest of the congressional Republicans who care only about one thing–staying in office. I was even concerned about him getting in bed with Harry and Nancy. By December of year one, though, I was amazed at what he had accomplished. Three months later, however–after steel tariffs and the infrastructure bill and the spending resolution and now the budget, I’m pretty much back to hoping for a Democratic takeover of Congress. A good house cleansing never hurt anyone. And if Americans are going to be oppressed by big government, I’d rather have it done by the folks who are (usually) willing to admit that that is what they want to do. Let me be clear here: this is not an indictment of Trump; the jury is still out on him. But the verdict is in on the Republican leadership. Given Schumer’s comments above, it is quite possible that government policies would be more conservative with the Democrats in charge of Congress as Republicans might turn from “governing” to resistance. We wouldn’t be able to be proactive in Congress, but that doesn’t seem like much of a possibility as it stands anyway, and we might at least be able to stop the rapid growth of spending taking place under Republican leadership. Plus, there are still a lot of good, proactive policies being implemented within the Trump administration.

Austrian Economics as Common Grace

What Shawn Ritenour Says: “My goal in the lecture was to demonstrate how Austrian economics is one of the blessings God gave to mankind to assist in human flourishing. As such, the Mengerian economic tradition is a manifestation of God’s common grace. Because Austrian, causal-realist economics is a social science that is derived from realistic human action as the cause of all economic phenomena–a foundation that is congruent with the Christian view of man–it can be drawn upon with confidence by those who desire to promote human flourishing. There is no ultimate conflict between Christian doctrine and Austrian economic analysis.”

My Take: Any Reformed Presbyterian Austrian economist you can find is worth listening to. I recommend listening to Shawn’s entire lecture.

Does Reformed Theology Impede Racial Reconciliation?

What John Piper Says: “I think the content of Reformed theology is wonderfully, positively explosive in its true implications for overcoming racial hostility and suspicion and distrust and dislike. But I’ll say again, any theological position can be made the servant of sin and is, in fact, made the servant of sin somewhere in the world. Right doctrine in the life of the church is profoundly important. I’ve given much of my life to it. But even more important is the radical, supernatural, Spirit-wrought miracle of new birth that creates a new kind of human being. You might even say a new race — a new race that cuts across every racial and ethnic distinction. A new humanity that is not in its essence and not in its decisive, controlling heart white or black or Asian or American or British or German or Cherokee or Southern.”

My Take: We don’t have a racial problem in this country, we have a cultural problem. Because the culture at large doesn’t believe that Jesus Christ is God and died for their sins. Inside the church, the cultural problem is that even though many–though not all–of us confess Christ as Lord, too many listen to the culture outside the church instead of to Jesus. So we must vote for a black abortion supporter for president in the name of racial reconciliation and women must be elders, etc. I’m glad I am a postmillennialist–I don’t think I could handle the future looking through the pessimistic eyes of dispensational premillennialism. Our only hope in history is the “miracle of new birth that creates a new kind of human being.”

Darwinism as an All-Purpose Story Plot

What David Coppedge Says: “If you give scientific jargon to your imaginary vision, it sounds better that way. How ‘socio-sexual’ selection differs from plain vanilla sexual selection is not clear. But it doesn’t matter, because the Darwin play is always a work in progress. “Further work will now be done to test whether socio-sexual selection is the motivating factor behind the evolution of these ornaments.” How anyone can test such a thing on bones in the dirt is unspecified. Maybe they will use them as divination tools in the futureware screenplay.”

My Take: Everyone has a worldview. And everything everyone understands and says and does is done and said and understaood through the lens of their worldview. Including scientists and other experts. So when you read anything anyone writes or listen to anything anyone says–including me, the first thing you should do is figure out what their worldview is. You can then take on the details of their proclamations from there.