#current issues

The Redistribution of Wealth

The American presidential election is almost upon us (even those of us who do not live in the United States) and one of the contentious issues in this election, as with most elections today, regards the distribution of wealth and the inequality of possessions. Is it right that the wealthy should have wealth taken from them and given to those who have less? Is there anything fundamentally wrong with some having more than others? Wayne Grudem’s short book Business for …

5 Reasons Not to Live in Canada

I went to bed at 10:05 last night, and wouldn’t you know it, my site went down at 10:10 (or so I learned in the morning). I’ve had to dedicate some time this morning to trying to resurrect it. At this point it seems a little bit stable–stable enough to try to post this. However, it may well crash again. There is a team of people trying to fix it and they seem to be making a little bit of …

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Pondering Norway’s Darkest Hour

Norway has experienced a nightmare—3 hours of abject terror. On Friday afternoon, right around 3:30, thirty-two year-old Anders Behring Breivik ignited a bomb outside government offices in Oslo, killing at least 7. As the bomb exploded, he was on his way to Utoya Island, about 20 miles from Oslo, the location of a youth camp run by a political party. Dressed in a police uniform, he asked to address the group (there were some 700 people at the camp) before …

Bad Manners Masquerading as Media

The introduction of a new communications technology tends to bring with it an inevitable challenge of grappling with new rules of etiquette. This was true in the time of the telegraph when, for example, business owners had to decide whether or not they would receive work-related telegraphs at their homes after business hours. This was true in the early days of the telephone when people eventually decided upon the polite habit of answering the phone with “Hello” instead of “What …

A Cure Waiting for a Disease

There is a new documentary causing quite a lot of buzz today. It is called Orgasm, Inc. and it looks at the strange but inevitable collision of the pharmaceutical industry with women’s sexuality. Liz Canner uses this film to display the sad reality that pharmaceutical companies play a crucial role in shaping the diseases they seek to treat. To make money they need to treat diseases and they are certainly not above fabricating or exaggerating them in order to come …

What Makes a Woman a True Woman?

What is a true woman? How does a woman earn that one-word descriptor of true? It occurs to me today that as a culture we really have no hope of answering the question. After all, we have trouble defining a woman, not to mention a true woman. In today’s A La Carte post I shared a link to a story about a transgender golfer, a “woman” who used to be a man. Lana Lawless, a former SWAT team member, was …

How Will We Be Judged?

Over the past few weeks I spent a good deal of time studying the life of General Stonewall Jackson. He is one of the more complex individuals I’ve studied–a man who had a strong sense of God’s sovereignty yet was something of a hypochondriac, a man who exhibited a great deal of Christian character who nevertheless also owned slaves. The tension between these things is what makes him so interesting to me. He was by no means a perfect man …

Saturday Ramblings

I spent pretty well the entire week reading my book out loud to myself. You can’t even begin to imagine how sick I am of reading (and hearing) parts of that book. For six months I have read portions of myself time and time again. And again. And again. But with 28 days until my deadline, I was able to send nine of its ten chapters to a few friends for their feedback. Chapter ten is still in the works, …

The Christian and Birth Control (Part 2)

Last week I wrote an article about the Christian and birth control. Before I continue this short series, I feel it is important to point out that I do not approach the topic from the viewpoint of a professional doctor or a professional theologian. Rather, I merely offer my reflections based on reading books, discussions with other believers, and study of the Bible. My purpose is primarily to stimulate thought and discussion. Because of this I will not answer every …

This Strange New World

“An Indian runner who won a silver medal in the women’s 800-meter run at the Asian Games earlier this month has failed a gender test and is likely to be stripped of her medal, news reports said Monday.” According to many news reports, Santhi Soudarajan, a 25 year-old runner, was made to take a gender test after completing her event and placing second. A panel typically composed of a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, and an internal medicine specialist discovered that she …