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

Cameron Pettigrew thought of himself as an exemplary employee.¹ In two and a half years at Fidelity Investments, he earned multiple company honors and was even offered a job at the corporation’s prestigious Wall Street branch. But then Fidelity got wind of his receiving an instant message at work about how poorly a National Football League player was performing. That led to an investigation, and Pettigrew was fired the next day for running a fantasy football league on company time. Fidelity called the league gambling through the use of company time and equipment and previously had warned all employees in an email, “[F]antasy sports activities [are] not permitted on company time.”² And Pettigrew is not an isolated case. One report estimates that companies lose as much as $1.5 billion annually when their employees play fantasy football at work.³ Yet this is only part of a larger trend: using technology to waste time that should be spent working.

Increasingly, experts are confirming through research that the use of social media is often a way for workers to rob their employers—an act of insubordination that can take several forms. For instance, 53% of workers under 24 say that socializing through their mobile electronic devices or entertaining themselves online is their primary “time wasting” activity at work. Almost two-thirds of employees with Facebook accounts access them at work, translating into a 1.5% loss of total employee productivity across an organization.⁴

Of course, technology used properly can result in savings of both time and money. Telecommuting allows workers to remain productive when bad weather keeps them away from the office. Online meetings save companies thousands of dollars in travel expenses required for face-to-face gatherings. Email prevents the requisite delay when letters are delivered through traditional mail channels. And text messages allow quick communication with other colleagues.

In the business world, electronics retailer Best Buy used new forms of media to create IT systems allowing all 150,000 of its employees to collaborate on important projects. The new systems helped the company increase productivity and cut steps in several standard processes.⁵

The downside of such technologies is that too many workers use them for individual convenience instead of company benefit.⁶  For example, on the Monday following Thanksgiving in 2009, more than half of all online purchases were made from work computers. That is significant given that Cyber Monday, as it is called, ranks among the busiest online shopping days of the year.⁷  The NCAA men’s basketball tournament in March presents another temptation for employees to steal time. Broadcaster CBS airs all of the games online complete with a “boss button” that workers can click to bring up a mock spreadsheet in case a supervisor walks by while they are watching basketball unlawfully.⁸

Certainly, past eras presented opportunities for workplace time wasting too. Long before the Internet came to be, personal phone calls, extended water-cooler conversations, and lying about sick days robbed companies of work hours that were rightfully theirs. But the Internet and social media offer more opportunities than ever for laziness, distractions, and dishonesty at an employer’s expense. Of course there are legitimate exceptions and qualifications to the general rule, but the problem is very real. And this is a place for Christians to be counter-cultural in their integrity and thoughtfulness. So all should pause in their flurry of electronic activity long enough to make sure it does not reflect a heart that refuses to give employers what is rightly theirs.

1. This article is quoted in its entirety from www.kairosjournal.org [↩]
2. Steve Schwarz, “Fired for Playing Fantasy Football,” Sports Network Website, December 18, 2009, http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=sportsnetwork&page=fantasy-nfl/news/news.aspx?id=4274390 (accessed January 22, 2010). [↩]
3. “This is based on the assumption that every fantasy football player actually works at an office.” See Nando Di Fino, “A Fantasy Player’s Worst Nightmare,” Wall Street Journal Website, December 18, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703523504574604233198387734.html (accessed January 22, 2010). [↩]
4. Jeffery Zaslow, “The Greatest Generation (of Networkers),”  Wall Street Journal Website, November 5, 2009, http://online.wej.com/article/SB10001424052748704746304574505643153518708.html (accessed January 22,2010). [↩]
5. Don Tapscott, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World (New York: McGraw Hill, 2009), 158. [↩]
6. See also Kairos Journal article, “Technological Rudeness.” [↩]
7. Kathy Shwiff, “Retailers, Electronics, Toys Sites Up in November,” Wall Street Journal Website, December 28, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091228-704456.html (accessed January 22, 2010). [↩]
8. The “boss button” was clicked 2.5 million times during the tournament in 2008 and was sponsored in 2009 by Comcast. See Eric Benderoff, “NCAA Tournament: CBS Winning in the Online-Revenue Bracket,” Chicago Tribune Website, March 19, 2009, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/mar/19/business/chi-tc-biz-thu-march-madness-onlmar19 (accessed January 22, 2010). [↩]

Euthanasic death is always promoted as an act of mercy.  However, it appears at times to be an act of mercy for someone other than the patient.  This was the case with Terri Schiavo, who had to be starved to death in order for her to die; a person who also had family who said they would care for her and physicians demurring to the “persistent vegetative state” (PVS) diagnosis.  All she needed was nutrition, water, and love, all of which was readily available, but denied by the euthenists.

Now, we actually heard from a Belgium man, Rom Houben, who was paralyzed in a car accident in 1983 and diagnosed to be in a coma or persistent vegetative state (PVS), as was Schiavo, but Houben was in this comatose state for 23 years.  I say that we heard from him, and I mean that because after 23 years he woke up, and here is some of what he said!

Houben, 46, said of his awareness and yet his inability to communicate, “I screamed, but there was nothing to hear.”  “All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life,” Houben said.  ”Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.” 

“I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me — it was my second birth,” he said, “I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead.” ¹

As Christians, we clearly recognize that there is a time to die, but unlike the euthenist, we esteem every human life, and we presume life; moreover, we asseverate that nutrition, water, and love are NOT extraordinary measures, and therefore should never be denied!

1. All quotes are from the Baptist Press Thom Strode November 30, 2009, accessed same day [↩]

Ask just about any person living in the U.S. if they are certain about anything, and they will more than likely say, yeah, Global Warming.  They know that if scientists say it, well it must be true.  Umh!

Well, do all scientists agree?  Is there a consensus?  Is man-made global warming certain?

Not according to many scientists, who are ignored by the environmentalists and present administration, but they do exist and they are considerably noteworthy.

February 27, 1992, a “Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming… signed by forty-seven atmospheric scientists, many of whom specialized in global climate studies…warned that plans to promote a carbon emissions reduction treaty to fight global warming…were ‘based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action,’ adding, ‘We do not agree.”’¹

A 1992 survey of United States atmospheric scientists by the Gallup organization demonstrated that “’there is no consensus about the cause of the slight warming observed during the past century’….’the majority of scientific participants…agreed that the theoretical climate models used to predict a future warming cannot be relied upon and are not validated by the existing climate record,’ and pointed out ‘agriculturalists generally agree that any increase in carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel burning has beneficial effects on most crops and on world food supply.’”²

The Heidelberg Appeal, released at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, warned against “the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development.”³  This was signed by over three thousand scientists, including seventy-two Nobel Prize winners.

The 1997 Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change, which was signed by eighty leading scientists in the field of global climate research and twenty-five meteorologists, declared “the scientific basis of the 1992 Global Climate Treaty to be flawed and its goal to be unrealistic…[because] it was based solely on unproven scientific theories, imperfect climate models—and the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from an increase in greenhouse gases.”⁴

The 1997 Global Warming Petition developed by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which “was signed by more than 17,000 basic and applied American scientists, including over 2,500 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the earth’s atmosphere and climate, and over 5,000 chemists, biochemists, biologists, and other life scientists well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on plant and animal life.”⁵  The petition urged “the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol” saying “the proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment…and damage the health and welfare of mankind.”⁶

They further stated, “there is no convincing evidence that human release of…greenhouse gases is causing or will…cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.  Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural and animal environments of the Earth.”⁷

So much for the media and present administration telling the public the truth about global warming.  Why is this so important for a Christian to understand?  Well there are a number of reasons, but two will suffice.  First, we are to be good stewards of the planet that God gave us, but we cannot fulfill that obligation with incomplete and misleading information bandied about by those who believe that the earth is to be exalted above man even if it takes faulty science to do so.  Second, the restrictions from the present administration as well as the Al Gores will actually hurt humans, particularly in undeveloped countries, because they will never be given the tools—fossil fuels, etc.—to develop richer food supplies and cleaner heating fuels, etc.  Presently, “some three to five million children under the age of five die each year from diseases contracted from impure drinking water.  Perhaps another three to five million die from diseases related to the widespread use of dried dung and wood for cooking and heating in the hovels of the poor, causing toxic indoor air pollution.”⁸

Without sufficient income, the poor cannot afford the solutions to such basic problems.  Without economic development, they will never have the income.  Without a free market and access to things such as clean burning fossil fuels and affordable energies they are doomed to die.

1. Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Acton Institute, 2007) p95: The Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Global Warming can be accessed at www.sepp.org [↩]
2. Environmental Stewardship, p95 [↩]
3. Environmental Stewardship, p95: The Heidelberg Appeal can be accessed at www.heartland.org [↩]
4. Environmental Stewardship, p95: The Leipzig Declaration on Climate Change can be accessed at www.sepp.org [↩]
5. Environmental Stewardship, p96: The Global Warming Petition can be accessed at www.oism.org [↩]
6. Environmental Stewardship, p96 [↩]
7. Environmental Stewardship, p96 [↩]
8. Environmental Stewardship, p81 [↩]

According to the Associated Press, Gallup polls from 1994 to 2005 consistently show that more than 90 percent of adults say they celebrate Christmas, including 84 percent of non-Christians.

Some Christians—as well as secularists, Muslims, Hindus, etc.—believe that Christians should not celebrate Christmas because the Bible does not command us to celebrate Christ’s birth, it has its origins in the pagan celebration of the birthday of the sun god Tammuz, and/or it is too commercialized.

I am one of those who think we should celebrate Christmas, these and other arguments not withstanding.

The Bible does not tell us to celebrate each other’s birthdays, wedding anniversaries, Mother’s or Father’s days…and it seems to me that if we are going to celebrate any birthday, it should be Christ’s.

Further, there are many things that we support or do that Scripture neither explicitly commends nor condemns.  However we are commanded to be thankful for all things (Ephesians 5:20), and if our Christmas is a time of sharing and thanksgiving to God, it seems to be honoring to Him.

As for the pagan connection, so are the names of our week—Saturday for the god Saturn, Sunday for the sun god, but we do not consider changing them.  In addition, one could argue that it is good to change a day honoring a false god into a day that honors the one true God. 

In addition, according to Greg Peters, an assistant professor and expert in early church history at Biola University, “There is also a theory that Dec. 25 was picked based on some early Christian sources that say that Jesus’ death would have been on March 25, based on the year and when the Passover happened….[he] also explains that according to ancient rabbinic practice, one’s death date was one’s birth date.  In case of Jesus, it was March 25.  Also in rabbinic tradition, birth is the same as conception.  Therefore, if Jesus was “conceived” on March 25th, you add nine months and get Dec. 25.”

As for the fact that Christmas has been over-commercialized, this warrants only de-commercializing your Christmas not eliminating it.

Christmas is a wonderful time to give thanks to God, to celebrate family, life, and eternal life; sing about God’s bountiful love toward us, recommit ourselves to sharing the gospel, and thereby honor God.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

God created man and placed him over the natural world, which includes the earth, the fruit of the earth, and the animal kingdom (Genesis 1:26, 2:1-18).  This vision clearly places man over nature and signifies that he is more important than the natural world, as well as allowing him to enjoy and profit from its bounty, to wit capitalism and ownership of private property.

Many secularists and environmentalists reject this understanding as too anthropocentric or “speciesist” and promote a “biocentric” vision, which makes man merely a part of the natural world, possibly even a detriment, but clearly not over it.  This is simply biological egalitarianism. 

Of course, the “biocentric” view is actually nothing more than romanticism. Humans are the only ones who have the rational and moral ability to be stewards of the environment.  In a purely “biocentric” world where everything is equal, there is no real stewardship.  In other words, if we are not making decisions about the environment, there will be no decisions regarding stewardship of the environment, i.e. do not look for an environmental symposium led by monkeys and attended by dolphins.

The Acton Institute offers a third alternative—which is the biblical vision—and that is a “theocentric” view.  This God-centered approach is the Christian approach, which recognizes the role of man and private and free enterprise as well as government involvement.

In this view, man is essentially more valuable and higher than nature and has been charged by God to govern and benefit from it (Matt 20:13-15).  However, the fall of man into sin made man most capable of turning liberty in license and stewardship into abuse.  Consequently government is to play a role in holding man accountable for such (Romans 13:1-7). 

However, since government is also composed of sinful humans, governmental power may also be abused (Ps. 94:20; 1 Samuel 8).  Therefore, government must be limited as in our Constitution and as taught in the Scripture, in both power (Deuteronomy 17:14-20) and division of power – judicial, legislative, and executive reflected in God as the Judge, Lawgiver, and King (Isa. 33:22). 

Consequently, in a Christian or “theocentric” approach, capitalism, profit, private ownership, limited government, and personal responsibility and accountability are the ingredients for solving the environmental questions of our day.

In a televised debate with Alan Keyes, Alan Dershowitz argued that he did not believe in God, while maintaining that people who do not believe in God can establish and do what is right, and there is no need to invoke God for us to be a moral society.  He said repeatedly in one form or another, all we have to do, is do what is right.  That became his mantra for refuting the idea that we need God to know right and wrong.  All we need to do is what is right, he would say.

The question from the audience for Dershowitz was this, “What makes something right?”  Following is his response.

It’s a question I’m actually writing a book about. It’s called “Doing Right.”  In my book, I reject natural law.  I also reject simple legal positivism.  If something is right, you have to struggle over that.  It’s very, very difficult.  There are no simpleminded answers.  It’s not because God says so.  Certainly I don’t hear the voice of God.  I don’t believe any human being has ever heard the voice of God.  But what is right is very difficult. What’s right is what experience has taught us over generations is right.  In my book, I say it’s much easier to know what’s wrong than to know what’s right.  We know what absolute evil is.  We’ve seen it.  We’ve seen it in the name of Secularism: Nazism.  We’ve seen it in the name of atheism: Communism.  We’ve seen it in the name of religion: the inquisitions and the crusades.  We know what evil is.  We know what wrong is.  Right is a process.  Right-ing is a process.  A process of eternal search, beginning from the first human beings, moving through the Greek philosophers, through religious leaders, through civil leaders.  I don’t know what’s right. I know what’s wrong.  But I have something else to tell you folks. You don’t know what’s right.  The minute you think you know what’s right, the minute you think you have the answer to what’s right, you have lost a very precious aspect of growing and developing.  I don’t expect ever to know precisely what’s right, but I expect to devote the rest of my life to trying to find out. (italics added)¹

Now I am really perplexed, if no one knows what is right, then why did he write a book about it–whatever it is?  If one does not know what right is, then how pray tell may one know what is evil since evil is the absence of right?  Moreover, how does Dr. Dershowitz know that no one else knows what right is, for that seems to make him all knowing and able to determine that someone does not possess what he cannot even identify.  A fortiori, why should anyone read his book, which by his own admission is not right since he does not know what is right and has no intention of ever knowing? 

Lastly, while I do agree that Dr. Dershowitz has never heard the voice of God, which is undeniably true  since he does not know what is right; I take exception to his averring that “[no other] human has ever heard the voice of God” since he gives no evidence for such a Brobdingnagian claim. 

It seems quite clear to me when faced with the option of believing Dr. Dershowitz’s claim—having already conceded that he does not know what is right—or believing Jesus’ claim, to not only know truth, but to be truth (John 14:6), for which he gave ample supporting evidence,  it makes little sense to side with Dershowitz.

1. http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=159474-1 [↩]

Did you know, “…that the British High Court ruled in a lawsuit that Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, “is scientifically flawed and has nine significant exaggerations and factual errors.” Among those exaggerations are the claims that sea levels could rise 20 feet by the end of the century, and that polar bears are disappearing because of global warming (in fact, they are not).”¹

Not likely to hear this in school or on most media outlets.  These and other challenges to the seemingly unbridled hype about man-made global warming are unveiled in a new movie, “Not Evil Just Wrong” produced by the Cornwall Alliance.  You can purchase the movie directly from them. Also you may want to check out Chuck Colson’s commentary on the film.

Why should Christians be concerned about the excessive hysteria over man-made global warming?  To mention a few, first, contrary to the claims of many environmentalists and the actions of some others, man is not an intrusion into the environment, a detriment, but actually God’s capstone to the environment, and given by Him the authority to rule over it (Gen 1:26-29).  Their distorted view of man’s place in creation causes them to choose to save some creature like a snail darter over human life, stop technological advancements via fiat, or cause economic strangulation via environmental regulation, effectively perpetuating poverty and pollution in poor countries, for example, where dung is used for heat.  They make man who is “created in the image of God” not only less than man, but less than an animal.

Second, truth matters, and when the truth is distorted in one area, it eventually will lead to distortions in other areas. 

Third, many of the environmentalists have an agenda that is far more in line with socialism, Marxism, and any system of governmental redistribution of wealth, which I believe always has a deleterious impact upon the family unit.

1. http://www.breakpoint.org/commentaries/13099-not-evil-just-wrong [↩]

Hitler’s animosity and inhumane atrocities against the Jews are well known.  His venom against them and his plan to use his own oratorical abilities to exploit them in order to resurrect Germany is a theme running though Mein Kampf.  However, one should never forget how effective his devilish, albeit intellectually doltish, scheme was.  Moreover, there are more than a few today who seek to eradicate from the globe the Jews, Christians, and other groups they deem to be corrupting influences. 

The following quote reminds us of how one can use a group in order to accomplish a dastardly political end.

“My object is to guide first-rate revolutionary upheavals, regardless of what methods or means I have to use in the process. Earlier revolutions were against the peasants, or nobility, or the clergy or against dynasties and their network of vassals, but in no case has revolution succeeded without the presence of a lightening rod that could conduct and channel the odium of the general masses . . . [W]eighing every imaginable factor, I came to the conclusion that a campaign against the Jews would be as popular as it would be successful . . . Disproportionately to their small number they account for an immense share of the German national wealth, which can be just as easily put to profitable use for the state and the general public as could the holdings of monasteries, bishops and nobility. Once the hatred and the battle against the Jews has been really stirred up, their resistance will necessarily crumble in the shortest possible time. They are totally defenseless, and no one will stand up to protect them.”¹

Even though Hitler died, there are still several “Hitlers” on the political landscape who will use whatever means possible to ruthlessly conquer the weak maugre all political agreements and niceties.

1. Josef Hell, Aufzeichnung, 1922, Z.S. 640, p. 6, Institut für Zeitgeschicthe in Frankfurt. Quoted in Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 28-29. Cited in Philip Rieff, My Life among the Deathworks (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 160-161. [↩]