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

Debt, Decline, and Dictatorship – what they have in common can be seen from a page of antiquity. Concerning Rome, “Real problems began when the limits of imperial expansion were reached in the second century. With no new territories to loot, the Roman treasury became seriously overstretched, and the emperors resorted to a policy of debauching the currency to fill the gap between falling revenues and rising expenditures. By A.D. 210, the silver content of the previously pure Roman denarius was only 50% of what it had originally been; 60 years later, it was a mere 5%. The inevitable inflation that followed raised the price of a bushel of wheat from ten denarii in A.D. 200 to two million denarii in A.D. 344. As the official Roman currency became increasingly worthless, soldiers refused to be paid in it, and tax collectors refused to accept it in payment of taxes.

This collapse of the financial system led to the adoption of totalitarian solutions by a succession of Roman emperors during the third and fourth centuries.”¹

1. For a detailed analysis of this, see Charles Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization, 2^nd ed. (New York: Madison, 2001), 111-128. For a more wide-ranging analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman Empire, but reaching similar conclusions, see Paul Johnson, “Cancers of the Ancient World,” in Enemies of Society (New York: Atheneum, 1977), 10-27. Accessed from Kairos 2-25-10 [↩]

One may be led by God to adopt even when becoming pregnant is an option. However, when one contemplates whether to use egg or sperm donors, adoption is always the better choice.

While in vitro fertilization is fine when the sperm and/or egg of the married couple are used, it is morally wrong to use a donor’s egg or sperm. It contributes to a consumerist mentality regarding children with full marketing exploits emphasizing the pedigree of donors. Advertisements for egg donors often list the desirable traits to look for when shopping for an acceptable donor of the best egg or sperm.

Additionally, the child may very well suffer psychologically when he realizes that he only shares the genes of one parent and cannot ever know the other biological parent. It influences young women to see the ability to produce eggs as a marketable talent rather than a sacred ability to contribute equally to the conception of her husband’s and her child in marriage, whom they are to love for life.

Most of all, it introduces a third party into the sacred procreative relationship that God designed and intended to be only between a man and woman who are married to each other.

Adoption does not involve any of these issues since the child is already born, is not biologically related to either adoptive parent, and may know his biological parents. Moreover, adoptions are rescue operations rather than child shopping excursions.

There is much debate about whether we should use torture at times, but I for one do not support the use of torture; however, I do disagree with some regarding what torture IS. Torture cannot mean just the infliction of pain or even pain that would be rightly considered inhumane in other situations. Some interrogative techniques may be considered excessive or torture if employed during peace times to gain quotidian information, or if utilized for minor infractions, or for revenge; however, those same techniques may in fact be the most compassionate techniques to apply during wartimes or anytime when countless innocent lives may be saved by doing so.

When evaluating what constitutes torture, one must consider the following: How can a person who could shoot a terrorist that is running toward a crowded building strapped with a bomb not use waterboarding to get information that can stop a terrorist from doing such? How is it compassionate to refrain from waterboarding if there is a probability of saving innocent lives? To me that is a misdirected compassion.

We are told that practices such as waterboarding do not always result in usable information, but that is simply the fallacy of the tyranny of the perfect; a technique does not have to work perfectly to be a viable option.

I for one want the interrogators to use every method available that is not truly inhumane in order to save innocent people from wanton destruction. Too often our compassion is misdirected toward the prisoner and not the victim, or toward the terrorist but not the terrorist’s target.

Additionally, shouldn’t Christians consider possible spiritual realities? For example, the terrorist should be given a chance to repent, but shouldn’t we also seek to grant that same opportunity to his intended victims?

Enhanced interrogation such as waterboarding helped get information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi that aided in finding and killing bin Laden.

Here is a suggested definition: Enhanced interrogation is the measured use of intense techniques that do not violate the following limits, but do allow for the possibility of death in a non-torturous way—this is war.

Here are some suggested guidelines:

1. TORTURE PRINCIPLES
   1. Avoid intentional excessive physical harm
   2. Consider offering repentance opportunities to the terrorist and the terrorized
   3. Avoid intentional permanent physical damage
   4. Use a scale to measure appropriate intensity based upon potential harm and value of information
   5. Use temporary trauma, e.g. waterboarding
   6. Use threat particular to the person without lying. Disinformation is not torture

In the quest to seem with it in our present scientistic milieu, preachers and Christians often pursue fluency regarding the latest polls, statistics and studies more than they do with Scripture and linear thinking. This quest is often characterized by indiscriminate reliance upon and usage of these tools, which actually leads people further from the truth both in their thinking processes and in their conclusions. Although these tools are useful at times, they should be used judiciously and sparingly lest one unwittingly becomes a scientistic myrmidon and by his example lead others to do likewise. The following are some inherent liabilities of such tools:

1. There are always conflicting conclusions between different studies and polls; thus, cherry picking is common.
2. Statistics can be used to demonstrate almost anything by inclusion or omission of certain variables related to the study or poll.
3. One rarely understands how the study or poll was actually done, which can dramatically transform both the study’s certainty and conclusions being presented.
4. Often a conclusion drawn is presented as THE conclusion while it may in fact be only one of the derivable conclusions, or may actually be misleading when other variables are considered.
5. Often these tools are used to demonstrate proof when, even at their best, they can actually only demonstrate varying degrees of probability.
6. The wording of the questions, order of the questions, tone of the questioner, time of the questioning and the pool of the questioned greatly influences the statistical data and conclusions.
7. Double blind studies are rarely used.
8. Fraud, personal agendas, shoddy work, biases and misrepresentation of the data are found repeatedly, and without being privy to the entire process, etc., one cannot detect this.
9. Decisions about what to do and not to do with regard to people, morals, etc., with these tools revamps the way modern man thinks, which is consistent with sole reliance upon science or scientism, but is actually contrary to linear, logical or biblical thinking because all one needs to know is what does the most recent study—experiment—say.
10. Although used to determine what ought to be and what ought not to be, these tools can only tell one what is or is not and can never tell one what should be.

For example, statistics may be used to show how many people are without health insurance, and the truth is that is all the statistics regarding how many have or do not have insurance tells us. Therefore, when politicians start drawing conclusions from such, they may very well be misreading the data or, perish the thought, misrepresenting the truth for their own agenda.

Say that thirty percent do not have insurance. This, in and of itself, does not tell us: how many have chosen not to have insurance, how many have chosen to spend their insurance money on other things, how many are covered through the generosity of hospitals, how many of those would rather be without government intrusion than to have insurance, how many are in transition between insurances, how many have strategically chosen to invest that money elsewhere for the potential future payoff and do not want Obama Care, who have made personal decisions—even religious ones—which led them to be without insurance and do not think others should have to pay, how many have the intention but have not made the choice to spend their money on insurance or are waiting on someone else, how many have made a conscious decision to eliminate their insurance for what they deem to be a worthwhile alternative, ad infinitum!

It is the truth that makes one free, but the present undue reliance of preachers on these fragmentary tools in order to bolster their preaching conclusions may bear short-term fruit, but in the long run may undermine the very truth they passionately desire to communicate because it trains a whole generation to rely upon polls, statistics, and studies with credulous trust. Moreover, there is very little incentive to develop a godly mind through devoted study and digging deeply into the Word of God.