Progressive Thinking via Peanuts Comics

Liberal and Conservative Worldviews

This week a post of mine garnered much attention on Facebook. While it was about Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts, it turned into more of a conversation (err… debate) on the role of the Bible in determining one’s worldview – specifically in regards to politics. It has been my observation that conservatives use the Bible to define their worldview, values, decision-making, etc.. Conversely, liberals use the Bible when it's not inconvenient to their own personal agenda, at which point they discard it as "out of date" or "culturally irrelevant".

As one might expect, my liberal friends do not agree with my observation. In fact, one of my friends went so far as to say, “conservatives use Scripture to support things that aren't in scripture at all (such as their arguments against abortion) and ignore it in terms of sex education (not just abstinence-only education, which has proven to be ineffectual in greatly reducing unwanted pregnancies).” It is obvious that what is being ignored is any and all teaching on the sanctity of life and the institution of marriage, and God’s provisions for sexual relations.

This leads to the question of how to interpret Scripture, of which there are 2: Exegesis and Eisegesis. Francis Chan explains the two:

Exegesis is an attempt to discover the meaning of the text objectively, starting with the text and moving out from there.
Eisegesis is to import a subjective, preconceived meaning into the text.

I was taught to interpret the Scripture through exegesis alone. Start with God’s Word; pray that the Spirit give you clarity; then study to see what the text actually says.

To me these two means of interpreting Scripture explain the difference between being conservative and liberal… in regards to how we live our lives and view the world.

Thus, for Christians, the Bible, properly interpreted through exegesis, should be the starting point and foundation for your political worldview, and not the other way around or cherry picked to support a particular political policy. Let me also add this is not just about politics, but for the Christian’s worldview in general.

Seventh Grader Sues School Over Right to Wear Pro-Life T-Shirt

This is a very interesting story to keep an eye on. Basically a 7th grade girl was manhandled by an administrator and forced to remove a pro-life shirt for wearing offensive clothing. In her defense, the pictures on her shirt were from a textbook. This is being taken to the court system and we will see what develops. Here is the article:

A California mom says her public school administrators violated her daughter's First Amendment rights when they ordered the seventh-grader to take off her pro-life T-shirt.

Anna Amador has gone to court on behalf of her daughter, who she says was ordered by her principal to change her shirt on "National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day." The shirt the girl was wearing displays two graphic pictures of a fetus growing in the womb.

The incident occurred in April 2008 at McSwain Elementary School, a K-8 school in Merced, Calif. Amador alleges in her legal complaint that school Principal Terrie Rohrer, Assistant Principal C.W. Smith and office clerk Martha Hernandez mistreated her daughter and denied the girl her First Amendment rights when they ordered her to leave the cafeteria and change her shirt.

"Before Plaintiff could eat [breakfast] she was ordered by a school staff member to throw her food out and report immediately to Defendant Smith's office, located in the main office of McSwain Elementary School," the complaint reads.

"Upon arriving at the main office, Defendant Hernandez, intentionally and without Plaintiff's consent, grabbed Plaintiff's arm and forcibly escorted her toward Smith's office, at all times maintaining a vice-like grip on Plaintiff's arm. Hernandez only released Plaintiff's arm after physically locating her in front of Smith and Defendant Rohrer...

Smith and Rohrer ordered Plaintiff to remove her pro-life T-shirt and instructed Plaintiff to never wear her pro-life T-shirt at McSwain Elementary School ever again...

"Completely humiliated and held out for ridicule, Plaintiff complied with Defendants' directives and removed her pro-life T-shirt, whereupon, Defendants seized and confiscated it. Defendants did not return Plaintiff's property until the end of the school day."

The school administrators dispute some of the allegations, said Anthony N. DeMaria, attorney for the McSwain Union Elementary School District.

"I think the school district has a very strong defense," DeMaria said. "The complaint does not properly characterize the events that happened. Certainly we dispute some of the events."

He said he was unable to reach the administrators to determine which parts they say are incorrect, because school is out for the summer. Rohrer, the principal, told FOXNews.com on Monday that she could not issue a statement without consulting with the school superintendent and their attorney. The other defendants and school district employees did not respond to calls and e-mails from FOXNews.com.

The school district sought to get the case thrown out due to "failure to state a cognizable claim," but a U.S. Eastern District Court judge ruled last month that all but one of Amador's claims could go forward.

The complaint quotes school district officials saying that they ordered Amador's daughter to remove the shirt because it constituted "inappropriate subject matter" in violation of the school's dress code, which bans clothing with "suggestion of tobacco, drug or alcohol use, sexual promiscuity, profanity, vulgarity, or other inappropriate subject matter."

Amador claims in the legal complaint that other students at the school have been allowed to wear expressive shirts, and she blames the school for “inconsistently applying their Dress Code based upon subjective determinations as to which messages are acceptable and which messages are not.”

One of the girl's lawyers, Mark A. Thiel, said that the images on her shirt of a fetus in the womb were same as those in her science textbooks. He said no student had complained about the shirt, and he said the girl's parents were not called when the incident took place.

"This was a young girl, not even in high school. But they didn't call," he said.

A spokeswoman for the local Planned Parenthood chapter declined to take sides in the case.

"Even offensive speech is protected as long as it doesn’t impinge upon the rights of others," said Deborah Ortiz, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte.

"School administrators have a mission to educate, and the student’s right to political speech should be protected in balance with this education mission."

UCLA law professor and First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh said Supreme Court precedent appears to support the girl's case.

"During the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court ruled that wearing black arm bands [at school, to protest the war] was OK,” Volokh said. “If students can wear armbands in protest, why can't they wear a pro-life shirt?"

He said the case would be different if there was evidence that the shirt could have led to disruption or fighting.

"Schools have a lot more authority than the government does in regulating speech,” he said. “If someone is speaking on a street corner and it looks like other people are going to start a fight over it, the government's job is to protect the speaker. That is not the case in schools. We need to make sure students learn. So if speech is highly disruptive, well … in that case we can suppress it.

"But the school's position that they can restrict speech just because they find it inappropriate is not correct."

But the fact that it's a K-8 school with very young children could change things, said Brooklyn Law School professor William Araiza. He pointed to the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Morse v. Frederick, where the court allowed a high school to suspend students in Juneau, Alaska, who waved a banner that read “Bong hits 4 Jesus” from across the street during an Olympic torch relay, because it was seen as promoting illegal drug use.

“[The school] could almost use a “bong hits” kind of rationale about protecting students from inappropriate messages,” Araiza said. “For instance, would you allow a 4th grader to wear a gruesome picture of a bomb scene? You probably wouldn't.”

First Amendment attorney William Becker, who represents Amador, disagreed that the shirt could be seen as containing inappropriate messages.

"The message of the T-shirt is that life is sacred," he said. "One would be very hard pressed to find anything wrong with that particular idea, except that some people do object to the political message.”

Embryonic Stem Cell Research Myths

Justin Taylor posted a this article, and I wanted to share it.

Yuval Levin--author most recently of Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy--shows four basic myths that the public and the media believe about embryonic stem cell research and policy:

1. Obama has restored federal policy to what it was prior to Bush’s 2001 stem cell policy announcement.

2. The Bush policy was a ban on embryonic stem cell research.

3. There are no viable scientific alternatives to the destruction of human embryos.

4. The promise of pluripotent stem cells is quite certain.
Read the whole thing.

Another article on Stemm Cell Perspective

Abortion: America's Silent Holocaust

On January 22, 1973 abortion was legalized in America. Since 1973 that have been 49,551,703 abortions have taken place; that’s more than seven times the number of Jews killed during the Nazi Holocaust. 1,206,200 took place in 2006, which is more than 2 per minute. Abortion is a human tragedy, and it is something we believe breaks our Lord’s heart as He created each of these unborn children in His image.

President Obama is now expected to sign The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) would eliminate every restriction on abortion nationwide.

• FOCA will do away with state laws on parental involvement, on partial birth abortion, and on all other protections.
• FOCA will compel taxpayer funding of abortions.
• FOCA will force faith-based hospitals and healthcare facilities to perform abortions.

While campaigning he made a promise to Planned Parenthood last year they expect him to keep. Obama said, “The first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do.”

Here is what God says, "When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.' - Exodus 21:22-25

I have no desire to stand on the streets and curse the darkness of abortion – something that takes more lives in a single year than did the entire holocaust. My hope is to cast light on the issue that each person is formed in the womb. Each unborn baby was created by God and deserves the audacity of hope to be born. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “You stand for something or you fall for anything.” May we stand for life.

Hope Requires Birth

Here is an interesting video put together by the Catholics.

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

This week I read a new blog from a pastor who gained my attention through a shocking title, “Why I hate sanctity of Home Life Sunday.” His title is shocking on purpose, but he made some great points. Shen statements beckons the question, what the heck is wrong with us (America) as a people? Here is a blurb from his article:

I hate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday because I’m reminded that we have to say things to one another that human beings shouldn’t have to say. Mothers shouldn’t kill their children. Fathers shouldn’t abandon their babies. No human life is worthless, regardless of skin color, age, disability, economic status. The very fact that these things must be proclaimed is a reminder of the horrors of this present darkness.

In 2005, America aborted 1.2 million unborn children who are precious to their Creator. Since the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973 legalized abortion, the total number of dead has exceeded 45 million. That’s more than seven times the number of Jews killed during the Nazi Holocaust. Abortion is a human tragedy, and it is something we believe breaks our Lord’s heart as He created each of these unborn children in His image.

Decision 08: Abortion

I have been flabbergasted by the lack of prominence abortion has taken in this election. The future of Roe v. Wade is at stake, and it seems as though no one is talking about it... why? To be clear, McCain is Pro-Life and Obama is Pro-Choice.

McCain has been clear to say that life begins at conception, while Obama states that, "Whether you're looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade." Above the President of the United States pay grade?!?!? Anyway, here are some articles on the issue:
TIME: McCain and Obama on Abortion
WASHINGTONPOST: Obama's Abortion Extremism
WORLDNEYDAILY: Why Jesus Would Note Vote For Barak Obama
POLITICO: Obama Ad Slams McCain on Abortion Rights

For me this has been a clear question on what is most important to the voter, because the positions on social issues are crystal clear. So what is the most important to you? Economics, Iraq, Global Warming, Family Values, or Human Life? Vote your conscience on Tuesday.