Ronnie W. Rogers, “Taking every thought captive…”

The media probes things taught in Governor Palin’s former church, Wasilla Assembly of God, her present church, Wasilla Bible Church, and Obama’s former membership in Trinity United Church of Christ and the Reverend Wright.  This probing begs for an answer to the question, “Is a candidate’s church membership or lack thereof relevant?” The answer is, of course it is, and the media should probe in these areas because faith as well as non-faith matters. 

However, one must be careful to remember that not all tenets of one’s faith have equal or even mentionable political relevance.  (more…)

I guess the experts were right, people’s morals really don’t affect their job, I mean as long as they are really good at what they do. For example, if a surgeon is an excellent surgeon, what difference does it make if he is an immoral person, or if a lawyer wins cases, who cares what his personal life is like, or if the heads of banking institutions are good financiers, what difference does it make if they are really immoral or even unspiritual people?

Freeing ourselves from primitive beliefs in God, personal responsibility, trustworthiness, telling the truth at all costs, and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” will allow us to focus on the really important things.

Oops. That would mean that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and…failed because the CEO’s, apparently at least some of the trustees, and borrowers just couldn’t add and subtract. Now you may be wondering how I know this since I don’t know anyone whoever even walked on Wall Street. It is quite simple actually since personal morals could not have any relevance to this massive failure, it could not have possibly been because of greed, covetness, lying, pride, and other such sins. Therefore what is needed are better math classes, and more…but perish the thought that we have left our spiritual and moral moorings as a nation and need God-granted repentance.

Worse still, is that the government will bail them out so that they do not have to feel the pain of their own greed and arrogance, which results in personal responsibility being further eroded.

Most tragically is that when the government continues on a path of protecting its citizens from the consequences of their own sin, people grow more and more dependent upon government and become increasingly less likely to look to God, who is really the only one who can deliver them. Jesus said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick” (Matthew 9:12). Meaning sick and know they are sick.

Pro-lifers often draw parallels between the pro-abortion position, Nazi extermination of the Jews, and the Dred Scott vs. Sandford decision 1857, which ruled that black slaves were not fully human and therefore not protected under the U.S. Constitution. Of course, pro-abortionists gnash their teeth at such comparisons, but are they legitimate? Well, not only is it legitimate, it is an obvious comparison because of the common themes. (more…)

Those of you who know me, know that I am deeply concerned about the pervasiveness of viewing all of life through the lenses of evolution. Thus man is only different in degree from animals rather than created in the image of God and therefore categorically different. Lest you think I am overstating the case when I argue that the most prominent evolutionist see everything through the lenses of “survival of the fittest” and therefore rules that apply to understanding animals apply to man, please note the following.

Peter Atkins, a very prominent evolutionist, professor of physical chemistry and a fellow of Lincoln College at Oxford University, participated in “The Future of Science conference that was held in Venice, Italy in September of 2006. The theme was evolution and as the organizers themselves state: “Evolution is a central concept in many spheres of human endeavour, ranging from astrophysics and genetics to philosophy and psychology. Reflection about evolution is reflection about ourselves, our future and our place in the universe.”

Consequently, the fundamental difference in the monkey at the zoo and you is that you are out of your cage.

We are often told that a person’s personal life should not influence whether a voter believes that he or she can serve in public office.  In other words, one may be a gambler, liar or a thief at home, but what one does in his personal life has nothing to do with his ability to serve in public office.  Of course this is a relatively new thought in our culture, but it has wide support, and I suppose as morality breaks down even further it will become concomitantly more popular.

For example, when a politician is discovered to have been unfaithful to his spouse, many seem shocked that voters consider that a disqualifier.  Often such infidelities are summarily dismissed as a private matter having no bearing on the job they are doing as a politician. 

But wait a minute.  Isn’t public office a position of trust?  Isn’t whether one keeps his word or not a political concern?  If we cannot trust someone to keep his vow that he made to his bride before God and the people that love them most—and they apparently love the most—then what basis do we have for thinking he will keep his word to a galaxy of voters whom he never personally met, probably will never see again, and to whom what he does or does not do in private meetings is unknowable? 

While we forgive, that is starkly different than concluding forgiveness means trust or that an issue that can be forgiven is synonymous with being irrelevant.   

Those of you who know me know that I am not a first draft writer—meaning that I tend to consider things ad nauseam. Consequently, I tend to refrain from blogging brief comments and only post articles that I have spent some time thinking about, which means that they are at times somewhat lengthy.

Further, those who sit under my weekly preaching, or I suppose even those who have spent any time talking with me, know that I have some difficulty, shall we say, finishing.

The truth is, that from time to time, I have desired to blog briefly on some issues that I do not have the time to consider more deeply, but I have generally refrained except on rare occasion.

However, I am going to start writing concise opinion articles more often. These will not be research articles, and may cover a host of things such as: what happened at church, an extra thought from my message or ponderings, something I heard on TV or radio, I read, saw, or had happen to me or someone I know. The key thing is that instead of refraining from writing on things I have a thought about because I do not have time to research and agonize over the precise wording as I tend to do, I am going to write.

The articles will be entitled “Think About IT”: Then what I am asking us to think about. I have already posted two of these concerning Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and the effectiveness of teaching abstinence, and about Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate.

I hope these will be beneficial to you by being biblically based, clarifying, thought provoking, and a quick read. It will be sort of like walking up to me in the hall and asking me a question, which I respond to briefly, and without much preparation. You will not get everything I think on the subject, or my thoughts about my thoughts on the subject—aren’t you glad—but you will know at least one thing I think about IT.  Yes, for you grammarians, the word IT is intended to be in capital letters.

P.S. Now think about what is wrong with me and how pitiful I am when it takes me this long of an article to tell you about how pithy the articles will be. Gee whiz—pray for me.

As one who cannot vote for Barack Obama because of his pro-abortion position, economic socialism, comfort in Liberation Theology, etc; and one who, while I have respected Senator McCain, has on a number of occasions strongly disagreed with his position, I have found myself actually elated about the McCain ticket. Why? What happened? Well what happened is that I heard Sarah Palin.

I must say, when I heard Governor Palin accept the invitation to be McCain’s vice president, I became more excited and energized than I have been about a candidate since Ronald Reagan. I later feared that enthusiasm might be diminished by her next speech, but her speech at the Republican Convention not only did not diminish my enthusiasm, it amplified it.

Is she capable of being vice president? I mean she is a conservative, woman, mother of five children, believes that God created the world, advocates abstinence teaching, lifetime member of the NRA, from Alaska, served as mayor of a small ordinary town, Governor of Alaska, Washington outsider, graduated from the University of Idaho rather than Harvard or Columbia, and started out serving in the PTA. In addition, she is, according to every report I have heard, an active Bible believing, conservative, evangelical Christian; and she is a real life pro-lifer, which is evidenced by her choice to give birth to Trig, whom she and her husband knew would be born with Down syndrome, and their handling of Bristol’s pregnancy. The truth is that most Down children are aborted and most teen pregnancies either end in abortion, dismissive relativism, or the teen facing the birth without the support of loving parents.

My answer is an absolutely, unequivocal yes.

Will she stay in the race in light of familial attacks and challenges? I say yes. I have neither heard nor seen anything that makes me think she is a quitter. And I say, “Good for Sarah”. If she runs or quits, it should only be because she believes that is the will of God, and not because it is the will of her enemies.

Should she run for Vice President since she is the mother of five children at home? If I were her pastor, I would have counseled her to choose the nobler, albeit far more difficult, opportunity and stay at home with her children until they were grown. This has nothing to do with her capability or being a woman. It has to do with what the Scripture clearly teaches and the eternal and peerless assignment of God to rear a godly heritage (1 Timothy 5:14; Titus 2:5).

Now you may be wondering, how I can enthusiastically support her¹ since she obviously would not have taken my counsel, and I would assume she disagrees with me. The answer is that while some disagreements are a deal breaker, others, although very important, are not. If everyone had to agree with me on everything before I could love and support them, I fear that even my two Chihuahuas—known far and wide as Luna Doll the sweetest dog of all and Lilly Brown simply the wigglingest dog in town—would abandon me before nightfall.

1. whether I vote for the McCain ticket is still undecided [↩]

The pro-abortionists were ever so quick to capitalize upon the pregnancy of seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin in order to demonstrate the failure of teaching abstinence in schools, a program which the now Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sara Palin strongly advocates.

As is discouragingly all too frequent, the demagogues were so quick in their attack that they spoke devoid of compassion, logic, or common sense. They quite gleefully concluded, “Governor Palin’s seventeen-year-old daughter is pregnant…so much for the effectiveness of teaching abstinence.”

By their logic, public education must be an undeniable failure since some politician’s children have not done well or even flunked out; laws against drunk driving have failed since some politician’s children have been arrested for DWI, etc., etc. If we apply their logic to anything in this life, it will be deemed a failure since nothing works perfectly, which by the way is the logical fallacy of the tyranny of the perfect.

The fact is, they would not apply the same standard to anything they support, nor should they. One may argue the merits of public education, abstinence programs…but as a Christian we should do so based upon biblical truth, research, and good old common sense. Further, we should not let pundits, political operatives, and demagogues get away with such inane shenanigans. They should be ashamed, and if not, shamed by those who listen.