The retirement of a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court affords the nation an opportunity to reflect on the nature of its laws and the practice of their interpretation.

In the minds of those who tend to think about such things, two camps present. There are those, represented by Justice Antonin Scalia, who insist on an "originalist" approach to law: we must always seek to interpret the Constitution according the intentions of the Founders. At the other end of the spectrum are those, like Justice Stevens, who see the Constitution as a "living" document, the meaning of which must be unpacked progressively, according to the changing situations of changing times.

Neither of these views is correct; nor are they entirely wrong. Both have some legitimacy; and both are inadequate.

Neither view is correct because, not to be too brief, we can never be quite certain what the Founders intended; at the same time, we must not fail to consult their wisdom in order to discern, as best we may, how they may have judged the changing circumstances of our own times. They remain, after all, the Founders of the greatest independent republic the world has ever known.

Both views therefore have some legitimacy: we must strive to understand the thinking of our Founders, and the laws in which they encoded their views; likewise, we must not be so foolish as to think that they could possibly have anticipated every nuance of application that subsequent historical circumstances might present.

However both the "originalist" and "living document" views of the Constitution are inadequate, alone or if, by some trick of legal alchemy, they may be combined. This is because the "spirit" of the Constitution emanates neither from the minds of the Founders nor the changing values, morals, and circumstances of any era.

The "spirit" of the Constitution - like it or not - arises both from the Law of God and the practice of that Law within the parishes of the Christian Church over the past two thousand years.

Dissevered from the Law of God and the voice of the Church, the Constitution is like a rugby ball. It is the temporary possession of whichever political philosophy possesses it, for as long as they may control and advance it toward their goal. The battle for the Constitution is a rough-and-tumble affair, with many scrums and laterals and collisions of bodies and tactics, yielding an occasional "score" for one side or the other, to the approving howls of one set of fans the audible moans of the other.

Meanwhile, out in the parking lot, the Church hands out tracts, pickets what it regards as the violence and folly of the game, and goes home after each contest convinced it's done all it can to make a difference.

But if the Church will neither teach the Law nor obey it; and it if persists both in ignoring the social and cultural heritage of our forebears and focusing instead on a narrowly pietistic "gospel", none of its protests or proselytizing will amount to anything other than harmless, albeit irritating, distractions in the parking lot of life. The struggle for the Constitution, and for the meaning of law itself, will continue apart from the input and influence of those whose heritage is both the provenance and the hope for law and morality.

T. M. Moore

To some observers it's becoming apparent that the President has a bit of a skin problem. Not color, but thickness.

He gets peeved rather easily when challenged or when his views are not immediately accepted. When someone - a member of the press or a Congressman in a meeting - doesn't immediately go along with his program, he cocks his head, lifts his chin, wags his finger, and lets his dissatisfaction be clearly known. As when he chided the Supreme Court for its decision in allowing corporations and unions to have a more active role in the political process. Mr. Obama clearly did not like that decision, and he made himself crystal clear.

So there's something just a little petulant about the President's nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Stevens. While a very bright legal mind with a good deal of academic experience, Ms. Kagan has only two years of legal practice, no experience on the bench, and precious few on-the-record legal opinions to commend her for so important an office.

What she does have going for her is that she agrees with the President, against Justice Roberts and the majority, in the afrorementioned case. Indeed, she argued - and lost - the case for the Administration. In introducing his nominee the President - head cocked, chin raised, and all - saluted her courage in taking up this case (he's obviously still miffed). Is this a Presidential poke in the eye for the conservative court, a judicial burr in the saddle, saying to the Court, "Take that!"?

Well, I hope not. But I can't help but think the President's skin problem must have influenced this unlikely choice. Makes you wonder, doesn't it, what he might be cooking up for the Congress and the country for after the November elections?

T. M. Moore

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants Catholic priests to preach her version of immigration reform. Immigration reform as she sees it, after all, is simply "how we live out the gospel" (small "g" mine).

In the Speaker's world, churches should stand by on moral and political matters until they receive the proper hermeneutical guidance from Washington as to what they can legally preach so as not to jeopardize their tax-exempt status. Apparently, as long as the message (or communication or whatever they call those things, as the Speaker noted) conforms to Washington's preferred ideology, churches will get a pass.

Because, as we all know, the churches exist to serve the interests of government. And if they don't, for example, if they insist on holding firm on such silly issues as, say, abortion, well, Washington can just ignore them. Like the Speaker does her own Church's insistence that she bring her views on this particular topic into line with the teaching of the Church. However, as the Speaker last year noted, she has thoroughly studied the history and theology of the abortion issue from the Church Fathers to the present, and she finds that the Church has nowhere taken a firm stand against abortion. So bug off, Rome.

Now, where were we? Yes, of course: priests and preachers, instead of wasting their breath on empty doctrine and silly spiritual instruction, or risking their liberties on conservative political issues, should just listen to the Speaker and serve up - in proper homiletical garb, of course - the correct views on the really important issues of the day, and she'll let us know what we can preach on next.

It must be fun being Speaker of the Hypocrites. For now.

T. M. Moore

The expression, "hoist with his own petard," refers to someone undone by an engine of his own making. Shakespeare was the first to use the phrase; today it has become fairly common. A petard was a kind of lance or ram, often with explosives on the end, meant to blow a hole in a wall so that attackers could get through to their objective. To be hoist with one's own petard is, we may imagine, not quite what the devisers had in mind.

America appears to be hoisting herself on her own petard these days. Having, by a gradual process, forsaken duty to God and commitment to virtue, America, sometime during the last century, made the pursuit of wealth her means of breaking through to the good life. The goal of life became economic opportunity unto the maximum enjoyment of wealth and things. The schools were bent to this end. Easy credit greased the skids for many to a personalized version of the good life. Questionable practices in the banking and finance industries made more wealth available to the few, at the same time offering the promises of more of the good life to the many. Politicians made "the economy, stupid" the deciding factor in every matter.

The good life, Americans became convinced, lay just beyond barriers of ignorance and opportunity; getting and spending would be the battering ram to get through those obstacles to the good life that lay beyond.

But now America's petard appears to be exploding in her face: the deepest recession in a generation; national debt spiraling out of control (have you begun paying down the $41,000 of that debt which is yours?); corrupt commerce in pornography available at the click of a mouse; oil flooding the Gulf, children, educated to perform as widgets in an economy, whose morality is determined by mere self-interest; mindless, frivolous advertizing the new literature of the age; borders overrun with like-minded wealth-seekers; corruption, for the sake of wealth and "the good life", rife at virtually every level of our society.

It will not be much of a "sport" - as Hamlet saw it - when America's petard, on which we are hoisting ourselves, finally explodes. There is a way that seems right to men; but the ends thereof are the ways of death (Prov. 14.12). Only foolish men could have put us into this desperate position; only God can bring us safely down from it.

If we are not praying daily for God to revive His Church and awaken this nation, we are consigning our nation and its future to certain self-destruction. The Lord is bringing the counsel of this nation to nothing, frustrating every economic and political plan to keep us on track for the good life; but His counsel and Law stand forever (Ps. 33.10, 11). Happy and blessed is the nation whose God is not measured in terms of GDP, but in terms of repentance and seeking the Lord (Ps. 33.12).

T. M. Moore

It shouldn't surprise us, in the age of "it all depends on the meaning of 'is'", that politicians and others tend to play a little fast and loose, shall we say, with words. A budget projection for health care reform turns out to be, oh, 100 billion or so off, erasing the promised 100 billion savings over the next ten years. Whatever. The Attorney General and the Director of Homeland Security think so little of the language of the Arizona immigration law, which they have denounced, decried, and threatened to bring suit against, that, well, they haven't even bothered to read the actual words of the document.

And then there's Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, captured on video on at least two recent occasions talking about his service "in" Vietnam. But, as the New York Times was kind enough to point out, AG Blumenthal, now running for the U. S. Senate, didn't actually ever serve "in" Vietnam. Well, he explained, what he meant was "during" - you know, during the time that a war was going on over there he was serving somewhere, wherever he was, serving. Indignant at the criticism and flanked by Vietnam vets - many surprised that he had not, in fact, turned up to apologize - AG Blumenthal declared that he would not allow anyone to impune his service record.

Nice use of language to shift the framework, that. His service record is not the issue. His truth-telling is - depending, of course, on what we mean by "is." In, during - whatever. The Connecticut Attorney General, the U. S. Attorney General, the Director of Homeland Security, Representative Mark Souder - and no doubt a cast of thousands of politicians, academics, pundits, and preachers - they all want us to take them seriously, even if they aren't very careful about words relative to their particular offices, and that in spite of the fact that words are their chief stock-in-trade.

Words matter. Truth matters. If we can't trust people to speak truthfully, can we trust them with anything?

T. M. Moore

The "Texas Textbook Wars" illustrates a problem of which most Americans are completely unaware. In Texas, as you know, 15 people - 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats - are deciding what the curriculum and textbooks shall be for millions of Texas school children. Because of the size of the Texas schools program, their decisions will impact textbook publishing and curricula for school systems all over the country.

In essence, this means that 15 people - Texans, no less, or Texans, at least, depending on your view of Texas - are about to determine the course of the education of America's children for the next decade. I can't think of a better example of the danger of turning the education of our children over to the State. Government has proven itself completely incompetent to manage the education of America's children, but here it is yet again, setting the course for the next generation of school children, and most Americans are simply yawning and reaching for the remote.

Back in the early 19th century, when public school was just beginning in America, parents retained the control they had had over the education of their children since the earliest colonial days. Each political precinct in the growing nation had its own school board - 160,000 compared to somewhere around 16,000 today, and, of course, Texas - and the school boards were responsible to the parents to teach the curriculum the parents required of them. From the beginning of the American experience parental control of the education of their own children was the norm. No longer.

If there ever was a better argument for private schools, home schools, classical schools, and most other alternatives to public education, I don't know what it is. No state government, nor the federal government, should be given the reins for the education of our children, yet here we are with a nightmare scenario, and few people seem to care. By whatever means parents can resist or avoid this pedagogical travesty, they certainly should. This is not to impune the good work done by many public school educators, including many Christians. It's simply to point out that this system is insane, and we are insane if we simply sit by and let it continue to operate as is.

T. M. Moore

Esther Duflo is an award-winning economist at MIT who works in the field of development economics. This is the branch of the dismal science which seeks to lift poor people out of poverty by throwing money at them by one means or another. The extremes of development economics are, perhaps at one end of the spectrum, government aid programs that seek to channel money to the poor through other governments; at the other end are the microfinancers, who make small loans to aspiring capitalists in impoverished neighborhoods.

Esther Duflo is not convinced either of these - or anything in between - is working. She doesn't insist they aren't, she just doesn't know. But she cares about the poor and believes that economic solutions must be found as part of a comprehensive answer to try to help them to a better way of life. So her calling is to study impacts. She spearheads an effort to use random sample testing, in a variety of economic development projects, in order to see which are working and which are not. Ian Parker tells her story in the May 17 issue of The New Yorker.

Dr. Duflo summarizes her calling: "I have on opinion - one should evalutate things." And that's what she does, in test after random test in poor countries around the world, challenging the settled assumptions of development economics and trying to see what actually works. She will not accept merely anecdotal (testimony) feedback; Dr. Duflo wants hard facts, and she and her teams are determined to shake-up the field of development economics, which she sees as going from fad to fad and pointing to the occasional success story as indication of success. Esther Duflo is committed to finding the hard facts, however. Her commitment is "to use evaluation to explore theories."

Now this is a good idea and another indication of the truth of Jesus' statement that the children of this age are wiser than the children of light. Because isn't it about time that we began to examine some the settled assumptions of how we do church in this country? Are "seeker" congregations really winning people to Christ in tranforming ways? Is big and pop really better at making disciples who deny themselves and take up their crosses to follow Jesus?

With all the push and striving to become more contemporary, business-like, and market-led in America's churches, you'd think we might want to know whether such a dramatic shift is really worth it. But where is the evaluation? Where are the hard data to support this radical change in the way we do church? There isn't much, and much of what is is still mainly anecdotal.

Meanwhile, contemporary and "seeker-friendly" or not, the Church continues to drift to the margins of society. Somebody really ought to open up the hood and see if what we're doing is working.

T. M. Moore

"Plug the damn hole!" With that outburst of frustration yesterday President Obama signalled that he may be coming to an understanding of something many of us tried to tell him before he took his oath of office: there are limits to what government can do.

The President came to office promising "hope and change," insisting that he was going to reinvent the American government so that government could be more responsive and efficient in meeting the pressing needs of the people and creating a more just and prosperous society and world. A majority of the voters believed it was so, thus indicating their own naive understanding about the limits of government.

Now, almost two years into the era of hope and change, we are discovering that government cannot make Iran or North Korea behave. Government cannot persuade the Russians or Chinese to go along with American foreign policy objectives. Government can't tell the Israelis what they can and can't do. Government can't save Chrysler. Government can't get the unemployment rate down. Government can't reform Fannie and Freddie. Government can't stop corrupt and self-serving earmarks. Government can't stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Government can't get the Republican Senate to cut it a break. Government can't muster the courage to seal the border with Mexico. And government, by the President's own admission, can't satisfy or buck the political left.

Government won't be able to fix the health care system or return the environment to pristine pollutionless condition, either. Yet government will doubtless continue to promise, probe, press for change, and push expansive legislation, all indicating that the biggest thing this government cannot do is learn the great lesson presently being written large in real-world America:

Government is not God.

But as long as this government continues to posture as though it were God, we can be sure of this much: God will limit the effectiveness of this government and allow it to put in jeopardy the wellbeing of the very people who hoped in its promises for change - promises it is, by definition, unable to deliver.

T. M. Moore

One of the most recent attempts to improve school performance by children involves paying them for grades. A report in The Economist (May 22nd) describes two separate studies done with American and Israeli school children, in which the children were offered money to improve their grades. Each test took a bit of a different tack - one paying for test outcomes, and the other paying for the number of books read.

The results are inconclusive. One of the problems with American kids is that they simply don't know how to do any better. It's not that they're lazy or uninterested in education. They just don't know how to improve. Which means they aren't being taught how to learn. Which means they aren't being educated at all.

Those children who were paid to read more books actually did a little better on their exams, and they continued doing better and reading books after the incentive was removed. Here the kids were enticed to pursue a learning methodology - reading - and the outcome was at least more encouraging than with those students who could not improve their test scores, not even with a wad of money awaiting them.

I'm troubled by these reports for two reasons. First, it's alarming to know that America's children do not know how to improve their learning skills, that they have not been given the basic tools for learning that they will need for the rest of their lives. Second, the idea of paying students to study harder reveals, in my view, the base economic motive that permeates American education today. Students are encouraged to learn for economic reasons, so that they can get a good job and enjoy the good life. Learning for the joy of learning is evidently not a sufficiently compelling motive.

But I suppose it's only what we should expect. In our day economics is the motivation for everything, so why not consider making it a more direct incentive in the education of our children? But learning - and living, for that matter - just to make a few bucks to spend on frivolous and fleeting things seems a travesty of education, not a solution. It's where we end up, however, when our highest purpose in life is to enjoy financial success and the comforts of things.

Christians are not immune to the attraction of money and things. But we serve a higher purpose, one we are called to embody in every facet of our lives, shout from the housetops, and proclaim to every creature. The Church's failure to demonstrate a compelling example of living for a higher purpose has yielded the floor to crass materialism. But this can never satisfy the deep human need for significance.

T. M. Moore

The crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is fraught with so much uncertainty - why it happened, whether it could have been prevented, how to stop it, who's to blame, what the long-term effects will be - that it may seem audacious, if not foolish, to posit any unequivocal conclusions from the matter. Nevertheless, I intend to do so, at least on one point.

Biblical justice has five aspects, the first of which we may call preventive justice. In any social order pleasing to God and reflective of His goodness and love, humans will consider in advance what steps they must take in order to prevent occurences of injustice. Hence, the command to build a railing around one's roof, so that one's neighbor doesn't swoon in the not mid-day sun and fall off (Deut. 22.8).

Preventive justice requires that we envision possible ways our actions may be harmful to our neighbors and that we take measures to preclude any such occurences. Thus, we are to be careful when burning in the out of doors, that we do not endanger the property of others (Ex. 22.6). Similarly, we must not allow our animals to graze in the fields of others, but must keep them in our own fields only (Ex. 22.5). If we dig a pit for any reason, we must be careful to cover it, lest our neighbor or one of his animals fall in it and become injured or killed (Ex. 21.33, 34).

This is preventive justice, and it reflects the kind of love of neighbor and creation that responsible parties must practice before untoward conditions arise, in order to ensure the continuity of justice and goodness in society.

Now we have learned the the oil industry, whether through poor planning, indifference, or simple inability to foresee certain possible calamitous eventualities, has not yet devised a means for capping a deep-water oil spill before it brings damage to coasts and the people and other creatures that live there.

But be sure of this: Oil-drilling in the Gulf will not continue in a status quo ante mode. The oil industry will be required by Congress - and rightly so, I believe - to devise better measures for preventing the kind of injustice that we see currently being foisted on the people of Louisianna and elsewhere. The works of the Law, Paul reminds us, are written by God on the heart of every human being (Rom. 2.14, 15). We act in the best interest of society when those "works" come to expression in enforceable statutes. So if the rails currently in place around the oil drilling industry are not sufficient to protect our neighbors and our environment, you can be sure that new ones will be required.

And, in the process, God, His Law, and the Biblical concept of justice will be vindicated.

T. M. Moore

I could hardly believe it when, shortly after the BP had begun its "top kill" attempt to shut off the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama called a national press conference - his first in nearly a year - to take responsibility for ending this crisis.

I wondered aloud, Now, how is he going to do that? Then I wondered, Who does he think he is? And then, What's he trying to do? I suppose in some ways I'm still wondering that. Charles Krauthammer opined that the President may have been encouraged that the crisis was almost over, and the "top kill" effort was going to succeed, and so he wanted to make sure that he was in line to get the credit for it. That sounded rather cynical, although not implausible. Perhaps he was simply trying to make a show of compassion for the people on the Louisana coast, and to rally the workers to keep on giving it the old college try. Or, perhaps, like Captain Ahab, he had decided to vanquish this oily whale, or be vanquished by it himself.

It's looking more like the last.

Whatever the outcome, it's clear President Obama and his entire Administration have become engulfed by the crisis in the Gulf. It is overwhelming their resources, distracting them from other business, causing heads to roll within the camp, and leaving the federal government looking weak, if not impotent.

I wonder now if the President wishes he'd never made that boast before the entire nation. Has Mr. Obama's unbelievable and unjustifiable confidence in the powers of government caught up to him? Did poor judgment lead to an opportunistic grab for attention? Or have stubbornness and pride - remember, Mr. Obama declared that the earth would begin to heal the day he was inaugurated - begun to undo him? Pride comes before the fall, the Scriptures remind us. We should pray for the President, who will surely be permanently damaged by this seemingly unsolvable situation.

But we should also pray, since there are still nearly three years left in his presidency, that he might learn something from the disaster in the Gulf, and his response to it, and humble himself before the God in Whom he still professes to believe.

T. M. Moore

If you've been listening to the Obama Administration over the past year, you will have noted that one word more than any other appears in their policy proposals. The word is "comprehensive."

The President insisted that the stimulus package not be done piecemeal, but that a "comprehensive" effort should be mounted. Same with the automobile bailout. He rejected every Republican suggestion to try to fix the health care system with small, targeted programs - being able to buy insurance across state lines, or tort reform, for example. No, the President had to have "comprehensive" legislation.

Now Mr. Obama is stalling on immigration reform even as he potshots the Arizona law and other proposals to staunch the flow of illegals into the country. It was all he could do to agree to send 1200 National Guard to the border. He wants "comprehensive" immigration reform.

Everything has to be done in a "comprehensive" manner, or not at all. What's this about? It's about the President waiting and schmoozing and back-room-dealing until he gets everything he wants into the program, and enough votes lined up to get it, and then going all-out for his "comprehensive" expansion of the government into more of the private sector.

Don't be surprised, over the next months, to hear talk about "comprehensive" programs to regulate offshore drilling, fix America's schools, and overhaul who-knows-what. President Obama's is the most ambitious and expansive administration in American history, and we are fools if we sit by and let this kind of kudzu government spread out of control.

Government is a servant of God, not God. Government is a defender of good, not the definer of it. Government in this country at least is of, by, and for the people, not over them. The Founders devised a limited form of government, checked and balanced against unnatural and unwise growth and corruption. From now on, when you hear a White House official or Congressional leader talk about "comprehensive" anything, make very sure you "comprehend" precisely what's at stake.

T. M. Moore