Bedrock

Is Any Ideology or Political Solution Compatible with Christianity? Can a Christian be a leftist, socialist, or a communist? Of course, a Christian can be anything politically, but in this case I wonder. I believe that the values on the left, of strong central government, high taxes, socialistic philosophies, and the resultant loss of freedom are essentially incompatible with Biblical Christianity. When I read recently, in a CT article on “emergent” Christians , that many young people in the movement like the author “lean left,” I was surprised and troubled. While I accept that postmodernism will affect Christians, especially young ones, it seems odd to me that they would trust government or politicians more than God’s people to do God’s work. As often with other non-traditional, nominally Christian viewpoints, I suspect that the roots of their thinking and the final authority for their convictions come from somewhere other than God. Other Christians that appear to “lean left” include ...

Today is Valentine’s Day, which makes me think of flowers. Flowers remind me of bees. Well, not really; this is just a cheesy segue to my subject. We live in a nation of drones, and maybe that’s the way humans have always been: mostly working, going to school, doing their thing, and not really thinking very much, at least not about anything very important. Still, I am inclined to think it has become worse, as perhaps it always does when life seems safe and good. I also think American education discourages thinking, and media and entertainment, which have become mind-numbing, turn brains toward passivity. So, guess where politics functions best and to what kind of participant? As for me, I am an American. I am not a hyphenated anything, and I don’t vote for candidates because they are hyphenated. A person who votes for a candidate because they are the same race or heritage seems to assume that they will represent them. Those who seek power, from a single community of votes, th...

I don’t have many conversation pieces, but my favorite is sitting on my cluttered dining room table being used as a hat rack. I once displayed it prominently in my science classroom. It is a statue of a monkey sitting on a stack of books, including one by Darwin, and scratching his head. Many things that happen today make me scratch my head, even though I actually read the books, listen to the reporters, and watch events unfold with a measure of understanding, beyond the need for food and other biological imperatives. For example, how does the death of a horse become thelead story  on nearly every news outlet? Granted it was a valuable horse, and perhaps its owners truly loved it and not just the millions it might have earned, winning races and siring future offspring. Still, how many humans died that day, people loved by their families and able to give far greater, if less tangible value ? How many unborn or just born children have died in anonymity, at the hands of doctors ...