Condescension of the Left

Why are liberals so condescending? Gerard Alexander answers that question. Here is the link to the original Washington Post article.

Update: An excellent companion piece by Charles Krauthammer

Update: Another great piece by Dennis Prager on Frank Rich at the NYT

Tax that man!

Saw this posted in a comment to a news article. Phoenix is now going to levy a 2% tax on basic food items. Hat Tip to coz85383.

When is enough, enough? Taxes are a moral issue!

“Tax Him”

Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he’s fed.

Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.

Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts
Anyway!

Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.

Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.

Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers,
If he cries
Tax his tears.

Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his ass.

Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won’t be done
Till he has no dough.

When he screams and hollers;
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
He’s good and sore.

Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he’s laid.

Put these words
Upon his tomb,
‘Taxes drove me
to my doom…’

When he’s gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax.

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service FeeTax
Telephone Federal, State & Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring & Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Toll tag Tax
Transportation Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

Hakimullah Mehsud killed by US missile strike

Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in mid-January by a US missile strike. Mehsud was responsible for hundreds of murders, including the suicide bombing of a CIA base in southeast Afghanistan in late December that killed five agency officers and two private contractors.

Score one for the good guys.

Theodicy

dorkmanscott asked me in my post, “The Recent Haiti Earthquake” why God would allow this.  I know it wasn’t God’s will (the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy), so I was wondering if you might be able to help me out a bit on this-I know there is a just answer, but I can’t place it.

The short answer to your question is that I don’t know where innocent suffering and death comes from. I know that – as you stated – God does not [directly] deal in it, and I know that an earthquake such as the one in Haiti is beyond human power to willfully cause.  Read on for a longer answer to your question.

Dorkman is getting into a branch of theology called theodicy. A theodicy attempts to construct an explanation of why God allows evil and suffering. The central question of theodicy is whether one can acknowledge that people suffer innocently. Western Christianity (i.e. all branches of Christianity other than Orthodoxy) generally denies that people suffer innocently in order to “protect” God from moral guilt. John Thiel offers a theology (not specifically a theodicy – this point will be addressed later) where one can acknowledge innocent suffering and maintain God’s non-complicity (i.e. “innocence”) in evil by subsuming the problem of innocent suffering into Aulen’s Christus Victor theme by noting that Christ has promised to destroy all death and suffering (Isaiah 25, Revelation 22). From the Christus Victor link in the preceding sentence:

Aulén argues that theologians have misunderstood the view of the early Church Fathers in seeing their view of the Atonement in terms of a Ransom Theory arguing that a proper understanding of their view is not concerned with the payment of ransom to the devil, but with the motif of the liberation of humanity from the bondage of sin, death, and the devil. As the term Christus Victor (Christ the Victor) indicates, the idea of “ransom” should not be seen in terms (as Anselm did) of a business transaction, but more in the terms of a rescue or liberation of humanity from the slavery of sin.

Aulén states that the chief distinction between Christus Victor and Satisfaction Theory is the role each gives to God and the Law. Satisfaction Theory, Aulén claims, contains a divine discontinuity and a legal continuity while the central emphasis of Christus Victor is of a divine continuity and a legal discontinuity. Since Satisfaction Theory arose from the penance based system of Anselm of Canterbury, its focus is on Law. God is unable to justly forgive without satisfying the Law’s demands and since only a man can fulfill man’s obligations to the Law, Christ must become a man in order to keep the Law perfectly and then suffer the punishment intended for us at the hands of his Father. This view, Aulén claims, inserts an opposition into the Divine relationship that does not exist in Christus Victor, and maintains a legal emphasis that is reversed in Early church thought.

Aulén points to the Law as an enemy in the writings of Paul and Luther (who he claims was a forceful advocate of Christus Victor), and claims that the penance systems of Satisfaction Theory and Penal Substitution place an undue emphasis on the role of man and on God’s obligation to the Law. Instead by suffering a death that, before the Law, meant an accursed status, Christ, instead of satisfying an obligation, overthrew the power of the Law, since its condemnation of a perfect man was unjust. His subsequent Resurrection, a mark of the Father’s favor despite the Law’s curse, deprived the Law of its ability to condemn. God the Father and God the Son are thus not set at odds by Calvary, but are united in seeking the downfall of the devil’s system of sin, death, and Law that enslaves humanity. This view, Aulén maintains, keeps from the errors of penance systems emphasizing Law and man, and reveals the unity within the Trinity’s redemptive plan and the freedom of the forgiveness shown to us by God through Christ.

Unlike the Satisfaction Doctrine view of the Atonement (the “Latin” view) which is rooted in the idea of Christ paying the penalty of sin to satisfy the demands of justice, the “classic” view of the Early church (Christus Victor) is rooted in the Incarnation and how Christ entered into human misery and wickedness and thus redeemed it. Aulén argues that the Christus Victor view of the Atonement is not so much a rational systematic theory as it is a drama, a passion story of God triumphing over the Powers and liberating humanity from the bondage of sin.

The Christus Victor theme is the theme of early Christianity, and the Church Fathers for about the first thousand years of Christianity. As the Roman Catholic church grew and finally split from the Orthodox Church in 1054, the satisfaction theory of atonement became predominant. From the Roman Catholic Church there emerged the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. The various splinter groups of Protestantism – of which your church is one of many – generally hold to the satisfaction theory of atonement.

Why are the theories of atonement important in constructing the theodicy? Because it’s not possible to account for innocent suffering if one holds to a satisfaction theory of atonement. Why is this so? Because in a satisfaction theory of atonement no one is truly innocent. Not only do people stand as sinners before God, but they also stand as guilty before God. That is, you, me, all mankind are guilty of Adam’s sin. Therefore, since everyone stands guilty before God, those who suffer – for example in the Haiti earthquake – suffer justly, even if they themselves have not done anything to merit such suffering. Therefore, there is no such thing as truly “innocent” suffering, and God is “protected” from its moral scandal.

However for the first thousand years there was no satisfaction theory in Christianity. The Orthodox Church today remains faithful to the early fathers and to Christus Victor, as do Lutherans though to a lesser extent. We do not reject that all have sinned (Romans 3:23), but we do reject the premise that, for example, you personally are guilty of sin of Adam. Adam is guilty of the sin of Adam, and we bear the consequences of that sin: suffering, sickness, and death, the fallen nature of humanity. We do not believe that Jesus Christ came so much to satisfy God’s anger and bear the guilt of our sins but rather that Christ’s mission was much more universal: He came to destroy sickness, death, and the devil. He came to restore mankind from his fallen nature to what God originally intended for us, our state before the Fall. He was crucified and rose again for the life of the world.

If we understand salvation in light of Christus Victor, it becomes possible to acknowledge that people do suffer innocently. So if people suffer innocently, where does that leave God? If we leave space for innocent suffering alongside God’s saving omnipotence amidst the powers of suffering and death, we do so by removing suffering and death from God’s causal agency (that is to say, God does not deal in suffering and death). Therefore, the suffering and death that humans do not do, because it is outside their power (e.g. earthquake in Haiti), is not done by God either.

Obviously, this raises the question, “from whence suffering and death?” How do you explain natural disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti? Well, Thiel’s answer is “I don’t know.” And that’s my answer too. But it’s important to remember that any Christian treatment of this issue will face ignorance in one way or another. Believers meet a wall of ignorance when they question why the God of the legal explanation (think satisfaction theory) would bring the punishment of suffering on those who seem so completely innocent (the Holocaust, children with cancer, etc.) Similarly, there is ignorance in trying to answer what purpose God has in willing circumstances of someone’s suffering and death.

I prefer ignorance regarding the origin of innocent suffering, rather than to deny the existence of that suffering. It is very difficult to deny the reality of innocent suffering. And it is impossible to say that the God who wills innocents to suffer is not in some way morally culpable, because obviously God is morally perfect. So with Thiel’s explanation we can have our cake and eat it too: we acknowledge the fact of innocent suffering and we hold that God stands blameless before such suffering.

However, Thiel’s theology of innocent suffering comes at a rather steep price: it risks dualism – that is, the idea of two “gods,” one God that is the Creator and Ruler of the universe (the God of the Bible), and a lesser “god” that is this hitherto unknown source of the evil and suffering. Of course, we believe in ONE God, not two gods, or a collection of gods. But I’m willing to accept that risk because I think in the end it is better and more consistent – theologically speaking – to affirm the fact of innocent suffering rather than to deny the obvious. And, Christians do not posit the existence of a lesser “god” (although both St. Paul and Christ refer to the “prince of this world” who although he is a created being could be seen as analogous to this hypothetical lesser “god”), we rather just say, we just don’t know where suffering and death comes from.

Prager University

Prager U has its own website! You can get all of Dennis Prager’s 5-minute courses in common-sense values.

Many universities offer knowledge. Only Prager U. offers wisdom.