And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him till the morning.  And he saw that he prevailed not against him; and he touched the broad part of his thigh, and the broad part of Jacob’s thigh was benumbed in his wrestling with him.  And he said to him, Let me go, for the day has dawned; but he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.  And he said to him, What is thy name? and he answered, Jacob.  And he said to him, Thy name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name; for thou hast prevailed with God, and shalt be mighty with men. [Genesis 32]

Well, so then Israel means something like “one who wrestles with God” or at the very least prevails in his struggles with divinity. The early Church father’s, who by and large were not of Hebrew ancestry, read that through Christ we are all striving to shed our inner Egyptian and cross the Jordan to be come Israelites. The connection of out spiritual state with Israel can be quite plainly seen in Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses. So … let’s take this and see what it might mean for the American Christian today? What does it mean for the individual Christian. How do you wrestle with God?

Back when I was at University, in the 80s and not as I tell my children when the dinosaurs roamed the plains, most of my study was concentrated in maths and physics which essentially was to wrestle with Nature. Which was to ask, how was the world constructed? How can we understand it? How do we interact with it on a fundamental level? However, these are the big questions. People working in the field don’t work directly on the large questions. At any one time, people are working on smaller, more tractable questions which on getting answers will move the larger communities understanding of the big picture forward … or at the very least sharpen our understanding of what we don’t know.

Similarly, it seems to me, we as Christians are called to wrestle in exactly that way with God. How do we understand God? How are we to interact with him and with others? How to understand and work toward Theosis/Sanctification?

So, here’s my question for the gentle reader. What smaller questions are you working on as you wrestle? What knots are you trying to untangle?

1. How fast memory fades. There was little mention of this the last few days.
2. H1N1 lies, apparently told.
3. A book with advice.
4. From the outside looking in, the Japanese are often very weird. I wonder about from the inside looking around?
5. Refining a position on SSM.
6. Talking about human life and its inception.
7. Of aid and ownership.
8. Teen employment and the min. wage.
9. Will Mr Obama deign to notice?
10. That’s starting to sound like real money, no?
11. Managing personal finance, an evangelical convinces a secular b-school graduate on method.
12. Wow, the lies people tell to demonize the other side.
13. A new army unit.
14. Summer dance photos.
15. McIntyre and climate.
16. Heh.
17. Connect-the-dots.
18. What price failure?

If government healthcare reform passes, then we can kiss our freedoms goodbye according to Judge Andrew Napolitano:

Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn’t care about the Constitution, it doesn’t care about your inalienable rights. If this health care bill becomes law, America, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, and privacy as you have enjoyed it will cease to be.

Last week the House of Representatives voted on a 2,000 page bill to give the federal government the power to micromanage the health care of every single American. The bill will raise your taxes, steal your freedom, invade your privacy, and ration your health care. Even the Republicans have introduced their version of Obamacare Lite. It, too, if passed, will compel employers to provide coverage, bribe the states to change their court rules, and tell insurance companies whom to insure.

We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms.

Think about it. Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

We’re spending trillions on both a stimulus that isn’t stimulating and a (so far, potential) co-opting of the health insurance industry.  And President Obama has the gall to say this:

President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.

To whom was he giving this "sternest warning"?  His own party, with his own approval, has been doing this! 

"It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession," he said.

"If I don’t stop doing this, I’m grounded!  I’m serious!"

So spending hasn’t fixed anything, and it looks like maybe, just maybe, the fella’ may yet have some sense in him.

His administration was considering ways to accelerate economic growth, with tax measures among the options to give companies incentives to hire, Obama said in the interview with Fox conducted in Beijing during his nine-day trip to Asia.

Tax cuts spurring employment?  Who would have thought?  Well, conservatives have always thought that, but besides them?

1. Utility monsters, which apparently are not scary creatures creeping in your gas lines.
2. A lottery and communist oppression.
3. Considering the Grand Inquisitor.
4. National Geographic and the Holy Mountain.
5. From the same source, an atheist (a Mr Tallis) on consciousness and evolution.
6. Unimpressed with a mix of politics and art.
7. Of death, sorrow, and hope.
8. Of poverty, corruption, and law.
9. Heh, DeSoto indeed.
10. Conservative populism.
11. The babysitting co-op.

No, it’s not that our Federal court system can’t handle a case like this. 

No, it’s not that New York can’t handle it (though we are about to open old wounds). 

No, it’s not that Barack Obama is doing it.

No, it’s not even that we conferring constitutional rights to someone who was neither a citizen or living here at the time of the crime (though that is a big issue).

James Galyean, a former federal prosecutor and former counsel on the US Senate Judiciary Committee, spells it out.

The criminal justice system is not the proper place to determine his fate. Our criminal courts provide protections to our citizens that should not be provided to a terrorist, and may actually damage national security.

Just think about the discovery requirements that could be placed on prosecutors. For instance, in the trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, prosecutors were required to turn over to defense lawyers a large amount of intelligence information. Documents from that discovery production, which were never supposed to be provided to anyone outside the defense team, were later found in an al-Qaeda hideout. Let me say that again, confidential documents from a trial in New York were later found in the hands of al-Qaeda.

Now consider that KSM was captured in a lightening raid in Pakistan. The intelligence that led to that capture has been the subject of a number of reports. However, al-Qaeda would love to know for sure where that information came from and how it was obtained. In addition to that, they may be able to learn a number of other things from discovery in this trial.

Emphasis his.  And he also notes that even military tribunals have their hands tied

The Obama Administration just approved new rules for military commissions. The President’s new rules make obtaining a conviction much more difficult, maybe impossible in some cases. The new rules require that a defendant be allowed access to any classified information used against him. This may prevent a number of trials from going forward if the military decides it cannot afford to “burn” the method or source of the information. And since the new rules are now the President’s rules, it would be his fault if the terrorist were not convicted, or perhaps not even tried.

But you know he’ll still blame Bush. 

The phrase, "No, Lord" is an oxymoron.

1. Carbon sponges.  The APS and climate noted here.
2. Considering the armour of God and actual armour.
3. Guns and jihad.
4. The AP and scare quotes.
5. Lampooning some Palin critics. More from another source here.
6. Zoom.
7. Peak … gold?
8. Muslims abused in the military? Apparently not.
9. More than a little strange.
10. Somebody not getting military strategy. Waiting to get it all “just right” is almost always wrong, recall Mr McClellan.
11. Not stupid, stupid raised a non-trivial exponential degree.
12. Considering a coming trial … continued here.
13. Mr Obama’s self portrait viewed from the right.
14. Patriarch Pavle has fallen asleep in the Lord.
15. While I’m not a fan of Ms Rand … the logical fallacies come fast and furious in this piece.
16. Chair and space.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is being promoted to, what amounts to, full citizen of the United States of America for purposes of standing trial, in civilian court, for his war crimes.  He’ll get all the rights and privileges afforded citizens, and even just residents living under the laws of our land, even though he has never been either of those. 

Nazis are rolling over in their graves.  No doubt John Kerry, who called the war on terror a "law enforcement" issue is feeling vindicate today.  (He’s still wrong.)

Democrats promptly erected straw men to defend this decision by the President.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the federal courts are capable of trying high-profile terrorism.

”By trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system a system respected around the world,” Leahy said.

But nobody’s saying that the federal courts aren’t capable.  What they are saying is that there are other ways to deal with this without the detrimental consequences.

Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona called bringing Mohammed to New York ”an unnecessary risk” that could result in the disclosure of classified information. Kyl maintained the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called ”blind sheik” who was tried for a plot against some two-dozen New York City landmarks, caused ”valuable information about U.S. intelligence sources and methods” to be revealed to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Making 9/11 that much more easier to plan.  And we’re putting the master planner on trial.  We’re throwing caution to the wind because of the President’s reckless promise to close Guantanamo within a year (which hasn’t been going so well, and people are losing their jobs over it).

And if you thought that the OJ Simpson trial was a circus, just wait until the KS Mohammed one.  "If he was waterboarded, he must be exonerated!"  OK, I’m no Johnny-Cochran-caliber poet, that’s for sure.

1. Political manoeuvring in Sri Lanka.
2. Brains and honesty.
3. Economics models and predictions.
4. Sugars and exercise.
5. North and South Korea.
6. Chavez.
7. On freedom and equality.
8. 2nd hand … smut.
9. A man and a birthday.
10. TV writers and the bike.
11. Suffering puppies (read to the refrains of “kill the wabbit” ringing in your ears).
12. Life and living from the atheist perspective.

Remember "Paul Harvey News and Comment" on the radio?  (Or am I showing my age?)  At least that guy had the guts to let you know that he had commentary in his show, unlike some journalists these days that sneak it in.  Well, no hiding it here.  This is "Doug Payton Links and Comment".

Becky Garrison, writing at the liberal "God’s Politics Blog", on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, says that "more walls need to fall".  Fair enough, and I’d tend to agree with that.  But sometimes walls are necessary, and are the least intrusive method of dealing with an actual problem.  They can protect more so than divide.  One of the walls that Ms. Garrison says needs to come down is the Israeli wall on the West Bank.  Meryl Yourish, however, compares these two types of walls — Berlin vs. Israeli — and notes major differences in the motivation and the result of each.  The Christian Left perhaps needs to understand a little nuance here.

Dale Franks, writing at Q&O, notes that the supposed upside of the government takeover of Chrysler, and subsequent sale of a large portion to Fiat, hasn’t, and looks like it won’t, materialize.  Your government, and your money, at work flushed away.

An insufficiently colorful color guard.  Scott Johnson at Power Line point out political correctness in the smallest aspect of our lives.  (And he needs to because the media doesn’t seem to want to notice it.  Or it looks on with admiration and doesn’t consider it news.)

For all the accusations of hate directed at the Right, and the religious Right in particular, Jeff Jacoby points out that they don’t hold a candle to the irreligious Left.

President Obama doesn’t think that the prospect of jail time over choosing not buying government-mandated health insurance (and likely choosing not paying the fine) is not the "biggest question" Congress is facing now.  Yeah, no big deal.  (Riiight.)  And in an Irony Alert, candidate Obama criticized Hillary Clinton for proposing a health care system with a mandatory purchase requirement. 

The New York Times has no problem calling Jim DeMint a "conservative Republican", but decides that Bernie Sanders, a self-described "socialist", is only a "left-leaning independent".  Courage and truth from that liberal media.

1. Democrat pundit Ms Paglia not enthused about the Democrats healthcare notions.
2. Of Christ and Trinity.
3. Some thoughts for Veterans day.
4. The dread haunted vet narrative.
5. Correlating perception, reality, crime and economy.
6. Global warming and some not-carbon notions.
7. Of freedom and uniformity and the Church.
8. Arrogant glaciers.
9. China bubble?
10. Uhm, yech.
11. Senators and healthcare.
12. Whip it.
13. Silence and evil.

If one were to attempt to continue the conversation about the Church in late modernity started by Matthew Lee Anderson here, there are a few avenues one might pursue. In the comments, there are suggestions of following threads from CS Lewis Abolition of Man. One might also suggest Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge, or Huxley’s Brave New World. In the following, the endeavor is made to both step off that beaten track and to ask a question.

As an outsider looking in at the modern protestant (non-liturgical) evangelical church, one thing which strikes me which is synch with the secular enlightenment culture which Mr Anderson highlights is a personalization of the notion of the sacred and a loss of an exterior idea of Holiness. One of the aspects of the enlightenment which is entwined with the Protestant separation is the de-emphasis of the liturgical expression in favor of or over and above the interior spiritual experience.

From Biblical narratives there is no small emphasis of Holiness. “Take off your sandals for the ground on which you stand is Holy” is repeated in Exodus and Joshua. Other examples abound of how being in a Holy place or the presence of God … one changes one’s mode of presentation and practice. A place is Holy not because of Moses (or Joshua’s) interior spiritual experience, but because of a thing outside of either, that is the presence of God was being there, at that place and time. 

At Emmaus the disciples knew Jesus when he broke the bread, and the Church through the ages took that to mean that in the Eucharist God is present in the sharing of bread and wine. One of the common features of liturgical churches like the Catholic, the Anglican, and the Orthodox is that their worship experience expresses and reflects a sense of a sense of Holiness which is not primarily to attain an interior spiritual effect akin but more in line with the taking off of one’s sandals for one is in the presence of the Holy. The Eucharist is a singular Holy event taking place in each Sunday liturgy, and their various liturgical celebrations express this in different ways.

So, as an outsider to the community noted above, (the non-liturgical protestant ones), I have a question. Where is Holiness to be found in your parish? How is it treated? How is it expressed? What does the term Holy mean for your church?

1. Raising kids.
2. On a relationship with God.
3. Modern slavery in the Maldives.
4. On the Healthcare bill.
5. Guns and the right to life.
6. For those not reading Greek.
7. Inconsistencies in the White House healthcare notions.
8. Difficulties in reading the bills.
9. Afghanistan over the last 8 years. The administrations narrative that of 8 years of neglect … not true. Surprised?
10. Moses as an American hero.
11. Road trains.
12. 50k soldiers buried.
13. Contra euthanasia.
14. Quietly giggling on a shelf.
15. That brave new world.
16. Economics, back to square one or not?

The link at #5 was wrong, it is fixed now.

No, not as in golfing.  I’m going to be quite busy this week, so blog posts this week will consist mostly of a collection of links that I happen across.

John Mark Reynolds, writing at the Evangel blog, wonders about that prediction that Christians would become a fringe political force if they stuck with their position on same-sex marriage.  This after Maine, of all places, upheld traditional marriage.  Not mentioned is that the House of Representatives barely squeaked out a health care bill (passing it with only 2 votes to spare) only after a provision was added that prevented abortion from being covered by it.  Wasn’t that supposed to be a losing issue, too?

October, 2009 was the 3rd coldest October recorded in the US.  Can we officially chuck those computer climate models and just admit we don’t really know what’s going on with climate, and thus should refrain from making pronouncements on what is or isn’t changing it?

Racist graffiti, and Al Sharpton isn’t all over CNN denouncing it?  Oh, wait, it’s anti-white graffiti.  Well then, nothing to see here.

Attorney General Eric Holder is endorsing extending provisions of the Patriot Act including roving wiretaps.  It’s one thing to talk it down when you’re not in the hot seat.  It’s another thing entirely when it’s your responsibility, eh?

The European Union, as a whole, could sink underneath the waves of debt very soon, having total debt equaling 100% of its annual gross domestic product.  A special commission "discovered" that a major reason is the socialist pensions and healthcare that the government guarantees.  And we want to follow them into this whirlpool?

And finally, the legacy of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and a musing about whether or not political correctness will allow a candid and honest public discussion, or if more people will die at the PC altar.