Tucked somewhere inbetween making tamales and lighting each of the 5 candles of Advent, watching the movie It’s a Wonderful Life has become sort of a family tradition for us. Call me sentimental, but I firmly believe the film to be a masterpiece of cinematic story-telling.

Greg Koukl, at Stand to Reason, recently pointed out an op-ed by Andrew Klavan, written in 2003, in which Klavan extolls the virtues of both Scrooge (1951) and It’s a Wonderful Life. He writes,

In “Scrooge,” a man grown rich because of heart-shriveling greed is forced by spirits to view the consequences of his existence.

In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey, a man in financial trouble because of his large-souled generosity, is forced by an angel to view the consequences of his non-existence: what would’ve happened if he’d never been born.

On both sides of the mirror, the results are the same: a revolutionary personal transformation, what the New Testament calls “metanoia,” which is often translated as “repentance” but which means literally “a change of mind.”

After the metanoia, there’s a lot of Christmas caroling and happiness and that sort of thing. Thus movie critics – who frequently confuse darkness with depth – sometimes belittle these films as sentimental.

They’re wrong. Watched carefully, the films are disturbingly realistic. Because, for each protagonist, the change in outlook has absolutely nothing to do with a change in circumstance. They aren’t singing carols and so forth because they’ve won the girl or beaten the villain or made millions or righted wrongs. Scrooge can never bring justice to the people he’s ruined, and Bailey will never become the world-traveling architect he wanted to be.

As we enter the new year, we would do well to consider whether or not our outlook for the future is driven by our circumstances or by our will.

Happy New Year.

I hear there are courses offered at B-school on this topic. This is odd, or a unfortunate sign of the times at best.

Business ethics are trivial. Two rules only.

1. Don’t lie.
2. Don’t steal.

Uhm, what isn’t covered in those two simple rules in the world of commerce? Why are there courses to teach how to do that?

Much has been written about Pastor Rick Warren’s invitation to give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration in just a few weeks. Many on the left have been upset about the selection of Pastor Warren because of his stance against homosexual marriage. Some on the right are suggesting that he may be compromising the gospel for the sake of political influence.

Pastor Warren is symbolic of what’s happened to evangelicals over the past 30 or so years. The church has forsaken the gospel in favor of gaining political and cultural influence. As a result, principles have been compromised.

If Pastor Warren truly wants to be effective, then he should take Cal Thomas’ advice and be more like the prophet Nathan:

If Obama plans on having Warren as a presence in his presidency, Warren should seek to model himself more after Nathan the prophet. Nathan confronted King David over his affair with Bathsheba, whose husband, Uriah the Hittite, David sent to the front lines to ensure he would be killed so that David could have his wife. God sent Nathan to David. Nathan told David a story about a rich man who stole a poor man’s lamb rather than take one from his own flock to feed a visitor. Nathan asked David what should happen to such a man. David replied, “that man should surely die.” To which Nathan replied, “You are the man.” (2 Samuel 12)

Nathan’s confrontation led to David’s repentance and one of the most beautiful Psalms ever written (Psalm 51). The point is that Nathan did not compromise Truth, but confronted David with what he had done wrong. How many modern preachers would confront a president like that? Probably not many if they wanted to maintain access.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee wrote this in his book Do The Right Thing quoting his mentor James Robison:

The prophets of old were rarely invited back for a return engagement. In fact, most of them were never invited the first time. They came to speak truth to power regardless of the consequences.

Governor Huckabee goes on to note that one can be a politician or a prophet but never both. My hope is that Pastor Warren will take this opportunity to be a prophet and not worry about being invited by President Obama for another speaking engagement.

The NY Times reports that things are looking better for black families.

The number of black children being raised by two parents appears to be edging higher than at any time in a generation, at nearly 40 percent, according to newly released census data.

[…]

According to the bureau’s estimates, the number of black children living with two parents was 59 percent in 1970, falling to 42 percent in 1980, 38 percent in 1990 and 35 percent in 2004. In 2007, the latest year for which data is available, it was 40 percent.

That’s definitely good news.  Let’s look at the reasons the Times suggests for this change.

Demographers said such a trend might be partly attributable to the growing proportion of immigrants in the nation’s black population.

Oh, so some of this can be attributed to intact black families coming in to the country.  Well, that doesn’t speak to the families already here.  How about them?

It may have been driven, too, by the values of an emerging black middle class, a trend that could be jeopardized by the current economic meltdown.

So indeed black have been doing quite well during the Bush administration.  You’d never know that from watching the news and listening to rappers dis’ Dubya.  Still, very good to hear.

So then, anything else>

The Census Bureau attributed an indeterminate amount of the increase to revised definitions adopted in 2007, which identify as parents any man and woman living together, whether or not they are married or the child’s biological parents.

Ah, I see.  By simply revising the definition of "parents", the Census Bureau can manufacture some good news.  As James Taranto (who gets the hat tip for pointing out this article) notes:

And why stop there? Suppose the Census Bureau were to redefine two as meaning "one." Voilà, any child who now lives with "one" parent would have an intact family. Instantly the rate would go from 40% to nearly 100%. Wait, make that nearly 200%.

Some may object that the middle of a financial panic is not the best time to start redefining numbers, a practice that could have unintended and undesired consequences for interest rates, currency exchange rates, asset values and so forth.

So here’s a more modest idea: Why not redefine together to mean "on the same planet"? So long as at least one man and one woman live on Earth, whether or not they are married or the child’s biological parents, every child is being raised by two (or more) parents, and this will remain true at least until we begin colonizing space. Hey, it takes a village!

Next: ending tyranny in the world by redefining tyrant to mean "lame-duck president."

In the original article, Prof. Robert Sampson, a Harvard sociology professor, call it "a positive change".  Right.  Kids are living with cohabitating "parents" instead of a married couple, the numbers look better partially because of intact families coming from other countries / cultures, and all this in spite of a burgeoning black middle class.

The good news is that the statistics are up.  The bad news is that actual change in the culture is not the reason we have the good news.

After being closed to the public for more than two years, The National Museum of American History has reopened after an extensive renovation. The Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson has a detailed account of how the renovation came about and how the curators view history. It sounds like from his account that the new version of the museum is a vast improvement over the old with a lot of work still to be done. If you’re ever in Washington, a few hours at the museum would be a worthwhile endeavor.

In a blog post, the YouTube crew has set up some new rules for "mature content".  They’re not banning it, but they are taking steps to ensure that folks don’t stumble into what they don’t want.

As a community, we have come to count on each other to be entertained, challenged, and moved by what we watch and share on YouTube. We’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to make the collective YouTube experience even better, particularly on our most visited pages. Our goal is to help ensure that you’re viewing content that’s relevant to you, and not inadvertently coming across content that isn’t.

I just have to give the YouTube folks a big "’atta boy" for this.  Taking common sense steps to keep, not just porn (which they don’t accept anyway) but even "suggestive content" out of the limelight ought to be cheered when it happens.  If you really want to find it, you can, but if you don’t, you don’t have to sift through it.  This is especially true for kids; YouTube is a nice resource to have for many purposes, but it can be a minefield.

More like this please. 

Joe Carter of Culture11 and formerly of The Evangelical Outpost has compiled a list of the Ten Deadly Trappings of Evangelicalism. These are ten trends that Joe has identified that evangelicalism could just as well do without. All I can say is a hearty “Amen” to Joe’s remarks. Take time to read through each post as there is a lot of great food for thought.

#1 The Sinner’s Prayer and #2 Making Converts

#3 “Do You Know Jesus As….”

#4 Tribulationism and #5 Testimonies

#6 The Altar Call

#7 Witnessing and #8 Protestant Prayers

#9 The Church Growth Movement and #10 Chick Tracts

In Florida, evidence of a growing problem with the public schools.

At least 150 Florida teachers have been disciplined in the past three years after being accused of sexual misconduct with students, an Orlando Sentinel review has found.

Some of the most severe cases resulted in arrests and criminal convictions for offenses such as secretly watching a boy change and shower, tricking elementary-school girls into touching a man’s genitals and having sex with minor students. But the Sentinel’s case-by-case review of teacher discipline records from the Florida Department of Education found that a lot of the alleged misconduct did not rise to the criminal level.

Still, parents would be alarmed.

[…]

Those 150 cases don’t include the dozens of educators who have been suspended or lost their teaching certificates since 2006 for molesting non-students, downloading porn at school, having sex in public and trying to pick up prostitutes.

There is no research to show whether this is indeed an actual trend or a case of students reporting it more often.  However, there is research, cited later in the article, that shows that students now are very reluctant to report it.

Researchers, however, say far more children are affected by sexual misconduct at school than many people may realize.

The most in-depth study to date, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education in 2004, showed that nearly 10 percent of the country’s public-school students — 4.5 million children — had received unwanted sexual attention from school employees, including teachers.

Only 11 percent of students who are sexually abused by teachers report it, said Charol Shakeshaft, an education professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who authored the 2004 study and is one of the nation’s top experts on the issue.

If only 11 percent reported it in 2004, we’d have to believe it was in the low-to-mid-single-digits in the decades prior to that.  That’s stretching things rather thin, in my opinion. 

And if only 11 percent are reporting it now, what we’re seeing, in Florida and elsewhere, could be 9 or 10 times worse that it looks. 

Homeschooling keeps looking better all the time.

From CNN, Poll finds great expectations for Obama,

“My fervent prayer is that there will be peace on Earth in all nations, and let all countries unite together to make this dream come true,” said iReporter Shari Atukorala of Kandy, Sri Lanka. “To the President-elect Barack Obama: Sir, you can do this for all of us.”

Utterly amazing.

Is this perception of Obama common? Maybe so. Also from the CNN article,

The public thinks it’s likely that Obama will improve race relations, improve economic conditions, bring stability to the financial markets, make the U.S. safer from terrorism, reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, reduce global warming, win the war in Afghanistan and remove U.S. troops from Iraq without causing a major upheaval in that country.

How much of this adoration, do you think, has gone (and will go) to Obama’s head? At what point does admiration for one’s leader turn into adoration, albeit worship, of one’s leader?

On the one hand, reality may rear its ugly head and simply educate the many ignorant, but sincere, idealists who have put their faith in Obama; on the other hand, the cult of worship, is an enticing temptation, which strokes at the very essence of the narcissist’s ego.

Christians: pray for Obama

Via Malkin, it seems we have a new slogan, what with the election of Barack Obama.

Wrong!

Truth be told, Barack Obama is half black and half white. In other words, he’s biracial.

Martin Luther King said, in his I Have a Dream speech, that he dreamed of the day when his children would

not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

So, let’s encourage supporters of Barack Obama to start following Dr. King’s wishes, and not focus so much attention on the color of Obama’s skin. Or, if they must draw attention to it, to at least begin admitting that, Our President is Black & White.

They spent money on this?

Sexual content on television is strongly associated with teen pregnancy, a new study from the RAND Corporation shows.

Researchers at the nonprofit organization found that adolescents with a high level of exposure to television shows with sexual content are twice as likely to get pregnant or impregnate someone as those who saw fewer programs of this kind over a period of three years. It is the first study to demonstrate this association, RAND said.

Next week, RAND comes out with their study that gravity leads to falling.

The suggested remedy is equally obvious.

A central message from the study is that there needs to be more dialogue about sex in the media, particularly among parents and their children, said Anita Chandra, the study’s lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND.

Although the Hollywood culture is certainly a major contributor to the oversexualization of the media (and they could do their part, but won’t, and will whine publicly and loudly if you suggest they do), parents still need to be the gatekeeper.

As my kids would say, "Thank you, Captain Obvious!"

Apparently the left and progressives, as noted recently, find that race and its consequences are the most important historical axis/issue on which to judge American history. On Monday I had asked:

Is this what the left believes, that “race is the single most important and consequential issue in all of American history.” Really? Wow.

There are a number of arguments against this. Here is the first one. What is the most important issue, what is the most important factor to track when viewing history of American and indeed the larger international history?

Math. Specifically, the history and development of the body of Mathematical knowledge.

Consider first the following. Imagine for a moment American history without race. No civil war, no civil rights movement and so on. Possibly without a civil war America would have been in a different place regarding the power of the central government and perhaps in that light a weaker America might have reshaped the outcome of the brewing European conflicts.

But … picture instead a world history without technology, without the advances in power such as steam, oil, and electricity; without the transistor, the printed circuit; without automation and industrialization. Picture instead, America in a world in which technology was still at the level of the Roman era. Wars were still fought with spear, sword, and javelin. That there were no airplanes, instead galleys and sailing vessels still plowing the seas.
Read the rest of this entry

California, Florida (two blue states) and Arizona voters rejected same-sex marriage in their states.  As Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council notes, this signals that the electorate is still generally socially conservative, and that if Obama has a mandate, it’s an economic one. 

This is especially true among Obama’s big support blocs; blacks and Hispanics.  Byron York noted at the National Review Online that these constituents supported the ban 70-30 and 51-49 respectively.  The 90+ percent of African-Americans that voted for Obama, and who rightly have celebrated the election of a black man to the White House, quite apparently think this is "Change We Can Do Without"(tm).

The limbo that those who were married under the Supreme Court decision find themselves in is of their own making.  Rather than using the legislature or respecting the will of the people expressed in the last ballot initiative, they changed the battlefield.  However, they took their initial success with irrational exuberance, and when they were met on that battlefield they were defeated, leaving them in an odd situation, and forcing the California legal system into a Gordian Knot.  Once again, the "will of the people" cry we used to hear from the Left has died down to a whimper when they have an axe to grind.

In California, among the many state propositions up for a vote, one of the most heated is Proposition 8. In 2000, California voters passed Proposition 22, “which added a section to the California Family Code to formally define marriage in California as being between a man and a woman” (Wikipedia). In May of 2008, the California Supreme Court “ruled that the statute enacted by Proposition 22 and other statutes that limit marriage to a relationship between a man and a woman violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. It also held that individuals of the same sex have the right to marry under the California Constitution” (Wikipedia).

Enter Proposition 8. Here is the entire text of Proposition 8, as per the California Voter’s Guide,

Note that the California Marriage Protection Act proposes to add a sum total of 14 words to the California Constitution.

Opponents to the proposition claim that the proposition is discriminatory and that it takes away rights. One of the mantras chanted is “Don’t eliminate marriage for anyone.”

Yet, such thinking ignores the fact that the government does not sanction marriage for anyone. Typically, one cannot marry another person if one is already married to someone else. It’s also highly unlikely that a 6 year-old boy and girl would be granted a marriage license by the government. The same could be said for a 20 year-old man and 18 year-old woman, if they were brother and sister. What’s more, it’s highly unlikely that the state government in California would sanction a marriage between two adult men and four adult women. It would seem, therefore, that we already have a form of discrimination, with regards to who can, and cannot, get married. In other words, the government already eliminates marriage for some.

Have you ever stopped to consider just why the government has an interest in sanctioning marriages in the first place? I can tell you one reason that they don’t sanction marriages for… love. Nope. You’d be hard pressed to find any mention of love on an application for a marriage license. Whether or not two people, who wish to get married, love each other is really of no concern to the government.

Why is that?

It’s really very simple. The government recognizes, as just about every civilization since humans began, that the covenant of marriage is the foundation and basis for the family unit. The family unit, it turns out, is the basis for a well functioning society. And a well functioning society is something that the government is very interested in. When a male and female commit to each other, the natural and general result is a family (i.e., children). This is a process that has been the cornerstone of virtually every civilized society. This family unit by marriage commitment, it should be noted, is something that a same-sex couple is incapable of attaining by natural means. Note that as a rule, by nature, and by design (HT: Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason), marriage between a man and a woman provides the family unit which the government has an interest in regulating.

One last point to be noted is that the only “right” which same-sex proponents claim will be eliminated by Proposition 8 is the sanctioning of the government, and as I’ve shown above, this is not an inherent right. No other “rights” will be eliminated. Same-sex couples already have access to domestic partner health benefits, they already have the protection of employment discrimination laws, they can freely practice their lifestyle, etc.

So, why is there the need for Proposition 8? That, too, is simple. It’s because those that advocate same-sex marriage want not the right (which they already have) but the blessing of the government. By getting the blessing of the government, they wish to impose their behavior, as normalized, upon the rest of society – including those that would consider their behavior as wrong.

Advocates of same-sex marriage would have you believe that the issue is about intolerance. In that, they are correct, for the position they take is intolerant of any position that does not accept their behavior as normal.

Further Ref:

Jennifer Roback Morse

Stand to Reason blog