Entries from August 2008 ↓

Our youngest daughter, Mary, had her baby! Her name is Elizabeth:

So fair! So delicate!

In a jaw-dropping medical breakthrough, scientists have found a way to re-program adult cells, turning them into cells that have a completely different function. This does not involve stem cells, but regular cells. Excerpts from Scientists Reprogram Adult Cells’ Function - washingtonpost.com:

Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a variety of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires associated with embryonic stem cell research.

Through a series of painstaking experiments involving mice, the Harvard biologists pinpointed three crucial molecular switches that, when flipped, completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into the more precious insulin-producing ones that diabetics need to survive.

The experiments, detailed online yesterday in the journal Nature, raise the prospect that patients suffering from not only diabetes but also heart disease, strokes and many other ailments could eventually have some of their cells reprogrammed to cure their afflictions without the need for drugs, transplants or other therapies.

“It’s kind of an extreme makeover of a cell,” said Douglas A. Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who led the research. “The goal is to create cells that are missing or defective in people. It’s very exciting.”

The work was hailed as a welcome development even by critics of research involving embryonic stem cells, which can be coaxed to become any tissue in the body but are highly controversial because they are obtained by destroying embryos.

“I see no moral problem in this basic technique,” said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a leading opponent of embryonic stems cell research. “This is a ‘win-win’ situation for medicine and ethics.”

Researchers in the field, who have become accustomed to rapid advances, said they, too, were surprised by the advance.

“I’m stunned,” said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., a developer of stem cell therapies. “It introduces a whole new paradigm for treating disease.”

Destroying unborn infants for their stem cells is now unnecessary and obsolete. I suspect that opposition to that practice, including the restrictions enforced by the Bush administration, played a role in causing scientists to pursue alternatives that turned out to be so much better!

We’re hitting the road today and will be gone for the whole labor day weekend. See the top post for why. So I’m sure I’ll miss John McCain’s announcement about his vice-presidential nominee. And since I won’t be taking my computer, I won’t even be able to comment on it. Since we’ve been making the vice-presidential office a big deal on this blog, we have got to talk about it.

So I’m turning the commentary over to you. Leaks will likely abound all day. The first person who hears who it is, tell us about it in a comment on this blog. If it’s before the official announcement, that’s better yet. We’ll see if we can scoop the world. If you’re wrong, someone else can get the credit for announcing the right one before anyone else.

Then discuss the choice. I know a lot of people are waiting to see who McCain picks before being willing to vote for him. Will he shore up his conservative credentials, which many question, with a conservative VP? Will McCain damage his pro-life credentials by picking a pro-death VP? We’ll know soon.

But I’m leaving this topic up to you to handle.

Victor Davis Hansen, riffing on Obama’s prop of a classical temple for his big speech, shows how a knowledge of ancient literature and history can help us understand contemporary politics:

Why and how did McCain catch up? Let us count the ways: the disastrous European victory lap of Obama’s; the uninspired professorial pontificating to Rick Warren; the deer-in-the-headlights serial responses to the Georgia crisis; and the McCain ads that were as cleverly effective as they were derided as childish by outraged liberals.

But perhaps the greatest consideration is Obama’s Hellenic hubris, which is different than simple arrogance. Hubris is a sort of fit, a haughtiness steeped in delusions of grandeur and divinity that takes over a weak individual, and soon encourages recklessness and overreaching (atê), all culminating in ruin and divine retribution (nemesis).

Go figure: Obama/Oedipus goes to Berlin. There he speaks in front of a grandiose Victory Column commemorating Prussian arrogance (after begging in vain to have a JFK/Reagan presidential moment at the grander Brandenburg Gate). He reviews American sins, revises the history of the Berlin Airlift, and claims (falsely) he’s the first black high official Germany has dealt with before. Then to hysterical applause from 200,000 Berliners, eager for subsequent free music and beer, he prances home, convinced that this was a success rather than an Apollonian trap.

Meanwhile an Ethel in Tulare turns on the TV and sees thousands of Europeans (who habitually make fun of her country) applaud Obama—and makes the logical assumption that they apparently think he is one of them, rather than one of us.

Next, drunk with pride, Obama thinks that such a losing paradigm (again, really a warning from the gods) apparently was not only successful, but will work again in Denver. So he transfers his speech to an outdoor forum, where tens of thousands of raving fans can watch him apotheosize in front of a faux Doric temple and accept nomination.

Isn’t there one sane person on his staff who can stop this divine madness, a single henchman who can whisper in his ear as puts on his golden crown not Vero possumus (”Yes! We can!”), but as was true of returning heroes during  Roman Triumphs—”Respica te, hominem te memento” (”Watch behind you; remember you’re just a man!”)?

So what did you think about Barack Obama’s speech? This take sees two different–and clashing–motifs:

Listen closely to the 46-minute address, however, and you heard two speeches crushed somewhat jarringly together.

The first half, one suspects, was the speech that Obama felt he had to give: a traditional partisan appeal that, for all his sonorous cadences, read like it could have been stitched together randomly from speeches delivered on any given day from rank-and-file Democrats on the floor of the House of Representatives.

There were denuciations of outsourced manufacturing jobs and promises to save Security Security and frequent baiting of John McCain for being the candidate of the rich and a weakling against Osama bin Laden.

The second half sounded like the speech Obama wanted to give: a plea for a new brand of politics, one in which politicians don’t attack each other’s motives or character, and Washington calls a ceasefire in such drearily familiar fights as abortion and gun control.

Obama did not acknowledge the two halves of his address—the partisan top and the post-partisan close—much less try to reconcile them.

Joe Eszterhas, who wrote the screenplay for “Basic Instinct” and other dark and sex-charged thrillers, has become a Christian in something much like a road to Damascus experience. Again, God breaks into the most unlikely of lives. We should praise God, along with the angels in Heaven.

There is another part of his story that deserves discussion. Eszterhas then looked for a church. Though brought up Catholic, he did not want to go back to that church, due to its pedophilic scandals. But going to a megachurch sent him back. He craved liturgy and the Body and Blood of Christ:

When Mr. Eszterhas visited a nondenominational megachurch, he heard a sensational sermon. But he felt empty afterward, missing Holy Communion and the Catholic liturgy.

“It may have been a church full of pedophiles and criminals covering up other criminals’ sins … it may have been a church riddled with hypocrisy, deceit, and corruption … but our megachurch experience taught us that we were captive Catholics,” he wrote.

Mr. Eszterhas told The Blade that despite his mixed feelings over the church and the abuse scandal, the power of the Mass trumps his doubts and misgivings.

“The Eucharist and the presence of the body and blood of Christ is, in my mind, an overwhelming experience for me. I find that Communion for me is empowering. It’s almost a feeling of a kind of high.”

He said that living in the heartland, he sees how much Hollywood producers are out of touch with most Americans.

“I find it mind boggling that with nearly 70 percent of Americans describing themselves as Christians, and witnessing the success of The Passion of The Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, that Hollywood still doesn’t do the kinds of faith-based and family-value entertainment that people are desperate to see,” Mr. Eszterhas said.

Would that he would have stumbled into a confessional Lutheran church! One can be both evangelical AND sacramental; Biblical AND liturgical.

But set that aside. I’d like to pose a question that has long puzzled me. The reasons given as to why churches should adopt contemporary worship and follow all of the church growth methodology generally have to do with evangelism. But how effective are they really evangelistically? Especially in appealing to the hard cases–long-time cynical, intellectually sophisticated, artistically sensitive non-believers like Mr. Eszterhas.

Praise songs, for example, tend to presuppose a level of intimacy with God that non-believers, by definition, simply don’t have. And the practice of keeping everything so simple and downplaying complex theology, in the name of appealing to the common man, can have little to say to the kind of person who asks hard questions and yearns for hard answers.

Isn’t it true that hard-core non-believers mock the megachurch kind of worship? Isn’t it true that the megachurches appeal mostly to people who are already Christians?

I think the “emerging church” is trying to reach people like Mr. Eszterhas, but I suspect he would find the ersatz liturgy, the self-conscious appeal to be being young, and the doctrinal fluidity of such churches bewildering.

Of course where ever the Gospel is so much as mentioned, God can create faith. I’m sure the megachurches have their converts. But it is the megachurch theorists that stress how technique can win people. By their own terms, isn’t there an important place for more historic Christianity and a richer, more substantial and sacramental worship, in reaching at least some people?

This is not from a conservative screed but “Slate Magazine”: The wacky plagiarisms of Joe Biden. - By Jack Shafer:

Biden didn’t merely borrow words and phrasings from Kinnock, which is a time-honored practice of candidates and their speechwriters and is almost never regarded as plagiarism. He became Kinnock, as David Greenberg writes today, claiming things about himself and his family that were untrue and that he knew to be untrue.

In his closing remarks at an Aug. 23, 1987, debate at the Iowa State Fair*, Biden said:

“I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?”

Biden then gestured to his wife and continued:

Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?

Kinnock had said:

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

Pointing to his wife, Kinnock said:

Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?

And so on and so on. (By the way, the Bidens were not the first ones in their families to go to college.)

Maureen Dowd is most definitely not a water carrier for the Republicans, so her account of the conflict between the Clintonistas and the Obamaites at the Democratic convention rings true.

This Democratic convention has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling fairy-dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult with Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru.

“What is that feeling in the air?” I asked him.

“Submerged hate,” he promptly replied.

There were a lot of bitter Clinton associates, fundraisers and supporters wandering the halls, spewing vindictiveness, complaining of slights, scheming about Hillary’s roll call and plotting trouble, with some in the Clinton coterie dissing Obama by planning early departures, before the nominee even speaks.

She goes on, in detail. The thing is, some Clintonistas seem to want Obama to lose, which would give Mrs. Clinton a clear shot for the 2012 nomination.

But after last night, now that the Clintons have given their speeches asking their supporters to work for Obama, do you think the party will be unified?

Sorry for the server problems we’ve been having, periodically preventing you and me from accessing this blog. The Dreamhost people, who host this blog, have been right on the case working on them, though, so I hope we’ve got things straightened out.

Michael Horton, in the article we looked at yesterday, goes on to show why Christians do need the church:

The gospel is good news. The message determines the medium. There is a clear logic to Paul’s argument in Romans 10, where he contrasts “the righteousness that is by works” and “the righteousness that is through faith.” We were redeemed by Christ’s actions, not ours; the Spirit applies this redemption to us here and now so that we are justified through faith apart from works; even this faith is given to us through the proclamation of Christ. Since this gospel is a report to be believed rather than a task for us to fulfill, it needs heralds, ambassadors, and witnesses.

The method of delivery is suited to its content. If the central message of Christianity were how to have your best life now or become a better you, then we wouldn’t need heralds, but rather life coaches, spiritual directors, and motivational speakers. Good advice requires a person with a plan; good news requires a person with a message. This is not to say that we do not also need good advice or plans, but that the source of the church’s existence and mission in this world is this announcement of God’s victory in Jesus Christ.

Coaches can send themselves with their own suggestions, but an ambassador has to be sent with an authorized announcement. If the goal is to get people to go and find Christ, then the methods will be whatever we find pragmatically successful; if it’s all about Christ finding sinners, then the methods are already determined. Simply quoting verses 13-15 reveals the logical chain of Paul’s argument: “‘For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” The evangel defines evangelism; the content determines the methods of delivery; the marks of the church (preaching and sacrament) define its mission (evangelizing, baptizing, teaching, and communing).

The marks of the true church are the proper preaching of the Word, administration of the sacraments, and discipline. The mission of the church is simply to execute these tasks faithfully. Throughout the Book of Acts, the growth of the church is attributed to the proclamation of the gospel: “The word of God spread.” Waking the dead, this gospel proclamation is not only the content but the method. Those who believed were baptized along with their whole household. They were not simply added to the conversion statistics, but to the church-the visible church, which is no more visible in this world than when it is gathered around the Lord’s Table in fellowship with their ascended head. Furthermore, the apostles and elders-and, by Acts 6, the deacons-served the church as officers representing Christ’s threefold office of Prophet, King, and Priest. . . .

Christ has not only appointed the message, but the methods and, as we have seen, there is an inseparable connection between them. All around us we see evidence that churches may affirm the gospel of salvation by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone, but then adopt a methodology that suggests otherwise. Christ has appointed preaching, because “faith comes by hearing the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17); baptism, because it is the sign and seal of inclusion in Christ; the Supper, because through it we receive Christ and all of his benefits. In other words, these methods are appointed precisely because they are means of grace rather than means of works; means of God’s descent to us rather than means of our ascent to God.

Thanks to EconJeff for alerting me to this article in the Wall Street Journal by a Christian writer and some time WORLD contributor Tony Woodlief. In trying to figure out how to make his kids enjoy work, he dismisses Adam Smith for reducing work to making money and finds nothing from churches that helps. He finally finds his answer in Karl Marx who praises creative labor! The author COMPLETELY MISSES the doctrine of vocation!

Maybe churches can help. But Thomas Aquinas fretted that work distracted men from God. Protestants like Billy Graham, meanwhile, see workplaces as venues for evangelism but say little about the inherent value of labor. When every plutocrat who runs for president must manufacture middle-class roots for himself, wealth is no longer proof of piety. And work itself, many pastors claim, is destined to be miserable because of God’s curse after Adam ate the forbidden fruit. So work is unpleasant, and its fruits are suspect. No wonder Concordia University’s Center for Faith and Business, among a growing crowd of organizations devoted to fusing Christianity and capitalism, sums up this theology of work in the last of its Ten Commandments for the Workplace: “Be satisfied with what you have.”

Max Weber is rolling in his grave.

Ironically, it’s that scruffy, godless rabble-rouser reviled by capitalists — Karl Marx — who offers a helpful work philosophy where traditional fonts of conservative wisdom fail. Marx saw humans as naturally creative: “free conscious activity constitutes the species-character of man.” Furthermore, humans want to craft loveliness: “Man . . . produces in accordance with the laws of beauty.” . . .

Sure, Marx advocated common ownership of property, which he might have been cured of had he observed children around a bag of cookies. And there is the fact that millions of humans have been enslaved or slaughtered by his intellectual progeny. But toxic governance prescriptions aside, Marx certainly had his finger on a truth, I think, about humans and labor. Left-leaning theologians like N.T. Wright and Miroslav Volf, meanwhile, agree that work should be seen not as a pietist’s grim duty or as an avenue to wealth but as a way of participating in God’s creative order. Liberal Tom Lutz’s “Doing Nothing,” a book that ostensibly sets out to justify Slackerism, likewise has a beef not with work but with purposeless work.

I’m a small-government guy, but when it comes to a work ethic, I find myself siding with the left. Humans need work, and they need to see that their work has a purpose. Come to think of it, you’ll hear that from any of America’s countless business gurus. We’re all Marxists now.

How can the doctrine of vocation be so invisible? Tony, send me your address via my WORLD e-mail address, and I’ll send you a copy of my book “God at Work” to free you from your Marxist shackles.

The Roman Catholic bishops of Colorado have answered a comment from pro-abortion Catholic Nancy Pelosi, who said that church tradition varied on when human life begins in the womb. The bishops point out that even when it was assumed under the primitive scientific knowledge of the day that “ensoulment” began with “quickening”–when the mother can first feel the baby move–the church has always taught that ABORTION IS STILL WRONG. When the baby is considered fully human has nothing to do with the immorality of abortion! Then these Roman Catholic bishops quoted a Lutheran:

In the blunter words of the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”