Hither and thither 12/15/08

And now... this!

• Best headline of last week? "Man sprays 'toilet-papering' teens with fox urine." Now, reading that, what is the first question that comes to your mind? Me too: how did he come by this substance? Furnishing further proof that the MSM doesn't think as we do, that question doesn't come up. We're left to envision a grimly-determined man with a roomful of foxes, a few buckets, dishes full of cold coffee (or beer), and a tiny little stool. The actual story is funny enough — "determined" certainly fits. Gent got night goggles and filled a squirt gun with the amber fluid. Local police found it less amusing. (I do share his sentiments about toilet-papering, for the record.)
• Oh, dear. I found the answer. And just a little bit more.
• And, ohh me. Poor, sad Britain. Produces clergymen the likes of Owen, Spurgeon, Ryle, Stott, Packer... and these guys. Britain's grand past makes me so sad for its present; but I think the very same for my own country. Edwards, Machen, Hodge, Warfield, Dabney... Maclaren, Schuller, Pagitt, Pinnock, Jones.
  
• Of course the big story of last week was the MSM's new nadir, in Newsweak's wholesale attack on Christianity. Oh, the specific is homosexual marriage, but the approach taken to the Bible leaves no authoritative voice outside of the reader's own imagination. It is rather an astonishing piece, written by one Lisa Miller, quoting "experts" of one persuasion and viewpoint only, and often speaking in her own voice as if she herself is a Biblical authority. If so, her reading has been far narrower than any Biblically-faithful pastor or scholar, as she somehow found herself able to find no representatives of the opposing view. Plus, her lame and tendentious "report" (tract) is riddled with silly mistakes and egregious errors.
• As if that's not bad enough, editor Jon Meacham springs upon this as yet another opportunity to make a fool of himself in public, poor soul. Meacham flings out a blurt that is, at the same time, full of chest-pounding faux-bravado (echoing John Kerry's "BRING - IT - ONNNN" — which, readers may recall, was immediately followed by Monsieur Kerry's assuming the fetal position the moment someone actually accepted the invitation), and of insultingly unserious silliness.
  
• I do kind of like this, though, from Miller's propaganda piece: "The great [!!] Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: 'There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.' The religious argument for gay marriage, he adds, 'is not generally made with reference to particular texts [true, dat! — DJP], but with the general conviction that the Bible is bent toward inclusiveness.'" (Gee, I wonder if Brueggemann will come out with a new version, and call it The Bent Bible. It would sell in the millions.)
  
• So, there it is again. It isn't what the Bible actually says, it's what it would say, if it were a better book — that is, if we had written it! I had a few gentle words about this ploy when Luke Timothy Johnson tried it.
  
• IOW, the Bible advocates homosexual marriage in exactly the same place the Constitution guarantees abortion-on-demand: in the penumbra!
  
• Justin Taylor had more excellent articles and pointers on this than I can link. Just go here and search "Newsweek" and "Meacham" and "Miller," if you want further reading on this full-out Yuletide MSM assault on Christian faith.
• Is Bush an evangelical?, Irish Calvinist asks. He thinks not. Stickler that I am, I've tried to find a full, verbatim account of the Bush interview. I found this transcript, which does not contain the words most have objected to. It has a mixture of the miserably foolish, and the acceptably evangelical — if one makes allowance for the fact on which I've long remarked: that President Bush is a lamentably ineloquent, inarticulate man. To that, we can add "wretchedly-taught," by the Methodist churches he's frequented. Does that surprise us? Sadly, no. Sadder still, Bush doesn't say anything Billy Graham hasn't also said, more's the pity. So, if Billy Graham is an evangelical, nothing Bush said disqualified him from the same label.
• I meant that if, by the way. Perhaps Graham isn't the evangelical we wish he were. Read Iain Murray's excellent (and depressing) Evangelicalism Divided, and you'll know exactly what I mean.
  
• Last week I told you about Richard Cizik, Chief Lobbyist and Vice President for Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, Obama-supporter, and otherwise? Well, he no longer occupies that post. CT also interviewed the NAE president.
• MSM "the coast is clear" alert: now that a Democrat has won, it's okay to report about good guys winning and bad guys dying.
• A "what if we had an objective media" thought: were the MSM objective — pause for the gales of laughter to die down — I would be interested in seeing reports comparing enlistment levels between this and previous Decembers, and months to come. I'll go out on a limb and say I expect to see them down, 'way down. I expect to discourage my 13yos, who has long considered military service, from doing so — if Obama (A) governs the way he campaigned and the way he promised, and (B) holds office. I am absolutely certain I'm not alone in that. Obama may have to re-institute the draft just to bring levels up, particularly if our enemies start taking advantage, should he govern as weakly and foolishly and cluelessly as he promised to do.