As I write, South Carolina Democratic Party leaders have gathered in a transparency-proof room in Columbia to decide what to do about the ignoramuses, as they see it, who are registered as voters in their party.

South Carolina Democrats, apparently without threats, bribes, or subterfuge of any kind, nominated one Mr. Alvin Greene to run as the Democratic candidate for United States Senate. Mr. Greene ran a, shall we say, unorthodox campaign, and garnered 59% of his party's votes, soundly defeating his nearest rival.

But evidently South Carolina Democrats do not realize that the Party does not exist to serve them; they exist to serve the Party, which they manifestly did not do on this occasion. So now Party leaders have to set things right; they have to do something about Mr. Greene.

Or maybe they won't do anything at all. But the mere fact that they have gathered to consider whether they might throw out the results of this election and find some other way to get what they, the Party leaders, want, reveals a good deal about how South Carolina Democratic leaders think about their state's Democratic voters.

This is the most egregious act of political hubris we have seen in years. It bespeaks disdain for our democratic polity and an attitude toward the political process that is making the great State of South Carolina look like a banana republic. Shame on Democratic leaders. So they don't like the man their members have nominated for the Senate. So do a better job educating your members! But don't arrogantly suppose that you have the right to call for a "do over" just because the outcome does not agree with your plans.

This reminds me of Ahab, pouting over not being able to persuade Naboth to sell him his vineyard. Who will be the Jezebel behind those closed doors to concoct a solution to the problem of Mr. Greene and his ridiculous supporters?

T. M. Moore

Scientists are hot in pursuit of the secrets of life and how to create it. In the July 3, 2010 issue of Science News, Charles Petit reports on one such effort being conducted at the Harvard Medical School, where a team of scientists and graduate students are determined to create life "from scratch" in an effort to show how Darwinian evolution could have developed out of chaos and randomness.

Petit explains that the aim of this effort is "to show how unguided natural events might have led to life on earth in the first place..." To accomplish this the scientists are pursuing a wide range of carefully guided activities to create artificial cells and then teach them how to make proteins.  As Petit writes, "unlike the first time - when life formed on its own - the second time it will get a boost from human ingenuity."

These scientists, and others like them in various labs, believe that order - Darwinian evolution - developed by sheer chance and then proceeded in spite of chance to overcome the very character of chance and create an orderly universe where life flourishes. Petit summarizes their view: "Once you light Darwinian evolution, it takes off."

Just like that? Well, Petit explains, certain conditions and activities must be "firmly supposed" of course. Firmly supposed? Yes, because it is obvious that "higgledy-piggledy chance" no longer rules the cosmos; Darwinian evolution is the order of the day. But then, to get to this conclusion one has to be willing to tolerate a certain amount of "sheer speculation."

So if I understand this correctly, scientists are using highly rational and intelligent procedures, carefully coordinated, assessed, and improved, in order to show how "higgledy-piggledy" chance "may" have created proteins which "might" have led to the beginnings of life.

In language study the subjunctive mood is the mood of "possibility." It does not assert, it proposes; the helping verbs "could," "might," and "may" are present to indicate a degree of uncertainty. But I thought science was the realm of certainty? Would scientists be willing to settle for "applying heat to water might make it change to a gas"? Or "leaping from a seventh story window may cause a body to fall to the earth"?

Besides the fact that the scientists who are conducting these experiments seem blind to their own presuppostion that some kind of order and intelligence had to exist for life to begin, this trafficking in the subjunctive is not typically the way of scientific thinking. It indicates a discipline at work in an area where reach exceeds grasp and "could be" is good enough, if it "seems" to demonstrate the validity of Darwinian evolution. These, of course, are statements of faith, not of proven fact.

Some things, you know, should just be left to God.

T. M. Moore

Governor Mike Huckabee is reported to have offered The New Yorker a comment about same-sex marriage that seems guaranteed to offend many readers. As Chris Wallace reported on Fox News last night, the Governor, given a hypothetical choice between having "a torrid affair" with either Nancy Pelosi or Helen Thomas (his own hypothetical), would consider the gay option as preferable.

If what Wallace reported is true (my copy of The New Yorker has not arrived on my Kindle as of this writing), we can count on choruses of outrage from a variety of corners.

Gays, of course, will be offended by the flippant manner in which he dismissed their concerns.

Liberals will object to his having had a joke at the expense of Nancy Pelosi and Helen Thomas.

Most readers will find his comments crude and thoughtless (the "ick" factor).

But what about Christians? Mike Huckabee has endeared himself to many in the evangelical community. Will they defend his remarks, even though he is reported to have said that, if Nancy Pelosi and Helen Thomas were his only female options, well, then he might consider gay marriage as a possibility?

Let's hope not. The reason for opposing gay marriage is much more cogent and considerate than the apparently flip comments of Governor Huckabee. Christians have both prudential and Biblical arguments against gay marriage, none of which require condemning gay people or trashing others we just don't like.

But the fact that this type of comment is reported so often in the media - whether true or untrue, in context or out - is a primary reason why so many people are beginning to dislike Christians and their faith. You would think that in talking with a secular media outlet a believer would try very hard to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove, keeping his speech gracious and edifying, and speaking gently and reverently about those whose views he opposes. However, that seems almost never to happen.

If the world chooses to stay away from Church in droves, it won't be because the Gospel is not as lovely, powerful, and gloriously transforming as ever it has been. It will most likely be because the "earthen vessels" in whom this precious jewel has been deposited are thoughtless, mean-spirited, and afflicted with an advanced case of foot-in-mouth disease.

T. M. Moore

The Biblical view of work teaches that all work has dignity when it is conducted as unto the Lord, with a view to pleasing and honoring Him and serving the needs of our neighbors. As Luther so eloquently put it, even the humblest milkmaid can work with dignity and joy, knowing that she is serving God and providing a needed service to her employer and neighbors.

Absent that sense of work as a gift and calling from God, the only thing that gives work meaning for many people is either achievement or reward. If the achievement of work is tangible, palpable, visible to others as well as to the worker, or if the reward is sufficiently lucrative to gratify the needs and wants of the worker, that job will be considered to have meaning and, perhaps, dignity.

But there is evidence that a great many jobs either don't pay enough or don't produce enough to give workers the sense of meaning and dignity in their work which they, as image-bearers of God (whether or not they admit it), should expect. One of the ways the marketplace is responding to this is in how jobs are now being titled.

As the "Schumpeter" columnist reports in the current issue of The Economist (June 26th, 2010), inflation of job titles is the newest attempt to give workers a sense of signficance and dignity in their jobs. So secretaries are now "administrative professionals", paper boys are "media distribution officers", those who clean offices are "surface technicians", and the number of "chiefs" and "vice-presidents" and even "executive directors" has multiplied by hundreds of percentage points.

But The Economist reports that all this hi-falutin' re-titling of familiar jobs only has a temporary effect. People will not find meaning and joy in work simply because they have an impressive title. Work is actually devalued by pasting phony names on it, as if to say to the workers, "Look, we know yours is not a meaningful job, so we're going to pump it up a bit with a ridiculous name." At least, that's the message many workers take away.

But work is meaningful. It does have dignity. Work can be a source of great joy and satisfaction, and can render good to many people. But this is only true within the framework of the divine economy. The Christian who does not see his work from within that context is depriving himself of deep satisfaction in serving God and men, and his employer and those served by his work of the best he could possible give.

Let our view of the work we've been given to do, like everything else in our lives, be informed and infused with meaning from God, and our work will have true dignity and lasting meaning.

T. M. Moore

It's ten years since the announcement of the mapping of the human genome, and, as humans are wont to do, many are taking the occasion to celebrate and reflect. At The Economist, their response is guarded, but giddy, and in the larger scheme of things, goofy (June 19th 2010).

At last, The Economist firmly declares, human beings are able to confront "the threat and promise of self-knowledge." "Self-knowledge," the lead editorial explains, "is often the hardest to learn and the least welcome, but the brutal truth is the best. Humanity had better hope so, anyway, for the truth will soon out for the entire species."

Especially promising at the moment is the ability to compare the human genome with that of Neanderthal Man, "a true human." These comparisons, The Economist insists, "will do what philosophers have dreamed of, but none has yet accomplished: show just what it is that makes Homo sapiens unique."

Well, no. Unless, of course, you insist on living an "under the sun" worldview where the only thing that matters is, so to speak, matter. Nothing counts but what you can count. Man is only the sum total of all his material parts, including - and especially - the chemicals that make-up his DNA. Once we are able to read and understand all those mapped strands of DNA, we'll really know what kind of being we are, what it means to be human.

But the end of all such materialistic science, no matter how valuable it may otherwise be, can never be complete human self-knowledge. Scientists cannot entertain the idea that human beings are more than merely material creatures, that we have an immaterial aspect - the soul - which relates to God and which is the formative influence in making us what we are. Christians cannot forfeit this idea, no matter how compellingly or scornfully scientists argue against it.

The human genome approach to the ancient challenge to "know thyself" will only leave us with "no thyself" at the end of the search. For God has made human beings a little lower than the angels, in His own image - spiritual beings, first and foremost. And we who understand this had better hold firmly to it, lest they who reject this view decide that our kind represents a genetic wrong turn.

T. M. Moore

Yesterday for our home worship service, I preached a sermon by John Witherspoon, Presbyterian minister, President of Princeton, and the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. He preached it May 17, 1776, and I thought his remarks - at a time of national division, economic downturn, and war - especially applicable to our own day.

His subject was the sovereignty of God over the passions of men. God uses even the worst passions and actions of men for His own glory, and we serve the purposes of God and our nation when we bring our intentions and practices in line with His divine plan. "Nothing is more certain," proclaimed Witherspoon, "than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."

We may well be reaching that point where the forms of our federal government can no longer contain the rottenness that festers within the soul of the nation. Politics and the courts have not proven to be friends of liberty over the past generations, but supporters of the idea that law must change to fit the temper of the times. In the name of liberty the reality of it may be slipping out of our grasp.

Witherspoon continued, "On the other hand, when the manners of a nation are pure, when true religion and internal principles maitain their vigour, the attempts of the most powerful enemies to oppress them are commonly baffled and disappointed." He concludes, "That he is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind."

Sound words, those. Witherspoon's point was that only true and sincere Christian faith can maintain the liberties for which, in his day, good men were even then beginning to lay down their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Law, courts, politics, economics - these are all essential parts of our republic and way of life. But they are not the spine of this nation, merely the changeable outward fashions. Unless a revived Christian faith rejuvenates the bones and nerves of the framework of this nation, our liberties will continue to be lost to ever-expansive government and our own selfish lusts.

With Witherspoon, therefore, let us pray, "God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both."

T. M. Moore

OK, now suppose you're the President of the United States. And suppose you're trying to make nice with the Muslim world so that maybe they would, you know, help turn off the spicket of new blood into the ranks of terrorism, or whatever.

So suppose further that your tack includes, let's say, making Muslims feel good about their contributions to the scientific enterprise. So you're gonna spend some money, reach out and thank them for preserving the Greek classics and thus helping to lay the foundations for modern science, and, in the bargain, congratulate them for the work some of their best minds have done in, I don't know, math and engineering, let's say. Plus, you want them to know that you, as President of the most powerful nation in the world, and official spokesman for her 300 million citizens, you want them to know that you know what a great contribution to scientific progress the Muslim world has made over the years.

So how do you do that? Here's an idea: Now that NASA has been officially stripped of any ability to put people in space - since, as we know, we can rely on the Russians to get us back and forth to wherever - since NASA has all those staff and computers and stuff, and, well, they're not doing anything in space, how about we get NASA to take as its top priority - not just a priority, but top priority - making the Muslim world feel good about its place in science history? Yeah, that's a good idea.

Is it? Is that a good idea? It is the new mission for NASA, according to the agency's Administrator, who revealed on Monday that President Obama has charged him, not with putting Muslims in space, but with creating a space for Muslims in the history of science.

Well, I don't know about you, but when I don my big white hat, snap on my Cheshire grin, and serve myself a little tea and small pills, this makes perfect sense to me.

I suppose.

T. M. Moore

LeBron James, who for seven years has dazzled the NBA with his skills, yet without leading his Cleveland Cavaliers to an NBA title, will sign with the Miami Heat for probably a bazillion dollars.

His motivation, as he put it, is to win multiple titles with his pals in Miami. One has to wonder how Miami Heat brass decided he might actually be able to do that, since, in spite of dominating the league in many ways, he hasn't done it yet. Some great basketball players actually do lead their teams to multiple NBA titles - Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Bill Russell, and a few others come to mind. Is LeBron James of this caliber?

Well, who knows? For me the story in this situation is not the move to Miami. It's all the hype and drama surrounding the move to Miami. A good many Americans seem to have cared a great deal about this announcement, or so, at least, ESPN thought. It gave an hour of prime time for Mr. James to set up and reveal his much-anticipated decision. Our local news primed us for this report five minutes into their hour broadcast, then held off the story until half-way through their program.

The amount of money and face time commanded by pop culture in this country tells us a lot about the country. Fun, splash, winning, hype, hip - we're all about such things. But I suppose this facet of our culture wouldn't be "pop" if there weren't such a widespread fanatical attachment to it.

Should there be such an attachment? Should we have loftier tastes in culture? Should New York City have only one classical music station? Should the same poetry books sit on the shelves of my local bookstore, untouched and unmoved for years? Should vampire movies sell more tickets than the local symphony? I may just be whining and complaining out of my own cultural preferences.

But it's a question worth pondering. After all, culture exerts a powerful molding effect on hearts, minds, and consciences. We should all be rather more circumspect about the culture we keep.

But then, that would require something more than fun. That would require thinking, and, for the Christian, learning to think about his cultural activities through the lens of Scripture. But that would require a deep and growing understanding of Scripture. And to get that we'd have to put aside some of the pop culture that commands so much of our time and affections.

Perhaps LeBron James will lead the Heat to multiple titles. I hope I don't care one way or the other.

T. M. Moore

This was a weekend of endings, or near endings. It appears that BP will just about end the gusher in the Gulf by placing a new, 75-ton cap on the persistent well. Spain won the World Cup, 1-0, over The Netherlands. The barefoot burglar came to his end in the Bahamas. The great spy swap brought an end to a sticky situation with the Russians. The end of the first half of the major league baseball season saw the locals 11 games under .500. Did I miss anything?

Kind of makes me wonder what the media will do now that all these big stories seem to be winding down (or, in the case of baseball, taking a breather). There's always lots more going on, mostly little stories about decent people living normal lives and doing good work; but the big stories command the audiences and, thus, the ratings, which are the key to advertizing dollars.

I tend to be a news junkie, if I'm not careful. It takes a lot of time to watch all the news programs now available. Mostly they report the same things, over and over, adding a little debate or panel to break the monotony. If I've seen one program, I've usually seen them all. Surely I have better things to do with my time?

Time is our most precious gift, as Edwards noted. We should use it as good stewards, investing the time of our lives in the progress of God's Kingdom, whether within, in our hearts and minds and consciences, or without, through any of a wide range of good works we might do, if we weren't watching the news.

Being up on the news is important. Being a news couch potato is not a Kingdom vocation. I'm admonishing myself here. But if the admonition gets under your skin, well, I won't mind.

T. M. Moore

Susie and I watched the Paul Giamatti film, Cold Souls, last night. This is a powerful meditation on a subject not friendly to our materialistic age: What is the soul?

In the film Giamatti plays himself, but he is struggling, because of personal angst, to master a part in a Chekov play. He decides, on the advice of his agent, to put his soul into storage for a while – just until he gets through this play. He visits a clinic and has his soul extracted – well, 95% of it – and it’s all downhill from there.

Giamatti ends up with another person’s soul and then has to go to Russia to recover his own, with the help of a “soul smuggler” from Russia. I won’t tell you how it ends. See it for yourself.

This film raises every question you’ve ever pondered about the soul. The main value of the film, I think, is that it reminds us that, for all their materialistic and rationalistic blather, our contemporaries know the reality of who they are: They are creatures with souls, which means they participate in an immaterial existence, a spiritual existence, an existence where, at the end of the infinite regression, God is waiting for them.

Cold Souls is neither a comedy nor a tragedy; it defies being set in one particular genre. And, according to the film, picking up on a quote from Descartes, the soul is only mostly immaterial; like anything that’s real it must have some material reality, even if it’s only a chick pea. Right?

But the movie leaves no doubt about the reality and value of the soul. The soul governs the body, shapes our outlook, generates affections, holds our priorities, and pretty much determines just who the heck we are.

So, in case you’re wondering, our contemporaries are aware of the kind of beings they are and, as evidenced in Cold Souls, they have a lot of questions. You and I have the answers – or, at the very least, we know how to talk intelligently about the subject.

T. M. Moore

Suppose there existed in your family an inheritance of treasured possessions which defined who you were, celebrated what you stood for, featured the many and varied gifts and talents of your forebears, and was the envy of every other family. How would you try to protect that? Would you, for example, entrust that heritage to people who had but little regard for the integrity and beliefs of your family, who downplayed the signficance of your family's contribution to culture and society, and who actively sought to identify your inheritance as really just an aspect of their own?

Yeah, I don't think so. But this is precisely what we in the Christian community are allowing to happen with the prized treasures of the Christian cultural heritage. So little do we know about and regard the cultural achievements of our forebears, that we don't seem to mind when those who despise the Gospel acquire - or steal - the greatest artifacts of Christian history and put them to their own uses in a manner completely contrary to the intentions and practices of Christians who made these things for the glory of God.

I'm not just speaking about the obvious: the way, for example, Chrysostom's great cathedral in Constantinople (modern Istanbul) - Hagia Sophia - was seized by Muslims and converted to a mosque, which it remains to this day. Or how, for years, many of the oldest and most important original language manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments were held in trust by Marxists. Or that Cal Berkeley was originally intended to be a Christian university. I'm thinking rather more practically along two lines.

First, because of our indifference and willful ignorance, we are hardly aware of the great cultural achievements of our Christian forebears (many of you may still be asking, "What is he talking about?"). This simply means that great works of art and literature, sculpture and architecture, scientific, technical, educational, and political advance - created by Christians to bring glory to God and benefit to men - are now in the hands of secular and unbelieving trustees who define and employ them for their own purposes, and we don't even know what or where they are.

Second, and again because of our indifference, we allow, without protest or objection, museums, academics, publishing houses, politicians, and others to take the cultural achievements of our forebears and, like the Muslims of Istanbul, attach their own definitions to them, so that they use the very things our forebears created in order to honor God as handy ways of denying Him. Not long ago a Baltimore art museum put on display certain of its Medieval illuminated manuscripts, carefully captioning many of them in a way designed to minimize or even reinterpret the faith motivation of those who made them. The Christians in Baltimore simply ignored it.

Is this a big deal? Well, it is to me. Can we do anything about it? Perhaps.

At the very least, we can become more familiar with our heritage - with what is ours if only by identity because of our common faith with those who made them - so that we can identify, celebrate, and preserve this inheritance, and show it to our children, before those who hold it in trust boil all the glory out for their own pecuniary ends.

And then we can encourage and support those, in every field of endeavor, who are seeking to continue and develop that cultural heritage, so that it doesn't grind to a halt with our generation.

Maybe we just don't care. But one day we will be united forever with the people who, at great expense of prayer and strength, made these things. And were it not for the fact that in the new heavens and new earth there will be no more sorrow and no more tears, I daresay we should spend eternity with those folks in a perpetual state of embarrassment, if not shame.

T. M. Moore

It now seems certain that Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be confirmed as the newest member of the United States Supreme Court.

In voting with the majority to pass her nomination out of committee, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham deferred to what he regarded as President Obama's ability to choose "wisely" in this matter. It's safe to suppose that all those with whom he voted, and who will confirm Ms. Kagan in the Senate, concur.

But if that is so, if the President really is so wise in selecting judges, then why is the Administration leaning on the Brits and Scots to try to reincarcerate Libyan terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi?

You will recall that al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds last year, shortly after President Obama made his first nomination to Supreme Court. At that time, asked what he was looking for in a judge, the President stated that he wanted someone who was "compassionate."

Yet when a Scottish judge acted on just such grounds, the President was outraged, and his Administration continues to seek to overturn that "compassionate" action to this day, especially in view of the fact that that decision seems to have been, shall we say, ill-informed.

So the President wants compassion in his judges, but he resents compassion in a judge when such is actually expressed. Perhaps the President reserves the right to dictate the terms of compassion? Or maybe he only wants judges to act in compassion toward certain people? For example, not necessarily military recruiters (we must suppose). Or has the President come to the realization that there are other, more important grounds, for rendering judgments than compassion? Like, perhaps, "justice and only justice"?

It just strikes me as a little far-fetched to be deferring to the President's wisdom in selecting judges. Or in much else, for that matter.

T. M. Moore