Let’s just have a few meditations on the economy today, and how it’s affecting the race for the presidency. What better way to accomplish this than to allow the cartoonists to carry the meditation? I know most of what I write about is national, but we can start with one state’s economy:

Of course, if that happens, the rest of the country will be affected also. Did you hear that California governor Jerry Brown just announced that the state debt is far worse than he anticipated? Gee, I wonder if his policies might have something to do with that? Why is it that we think we’re immune to an economic Armageddon?

This mentality can be found at the top as well:

One of my concerns is that a slightly lower unemployment rate will fool voters into thinking things are turning around. Anyone thinking that way is overlooking one significant factor:

In other words, the number of people looking for jobs keeps dropping because they’ve given up. A shrinking unemployment rate masks a shrinking labor force. That’s not progress. All it does is put more citizens on the government dole. Remember Julia?

How widespread is that outlook on life? The more it becomes the norm, the closer we are to utter collapse. Yet the Obama campaign continues to make job creators into villains. That’s bad enough, but the hypocrisy of it only adds to the reprehensible nature of the attack:

Keep in mind the president himself is also part of the so-called 1%. He’s not exactly suffering.

I don’t know much about Shorter University in Rome, Georgia. What I do know is what I read yesterday—that it’s a Christian university associated with the Georgia Baptist Convention and that it has decided to be consistent with that convention’s beliefs by asking its employees to sign a pledge indicating their agreement with the basic tenets of the church. To me, that’s only common sense. If you say “this is what we believe and this is what we seek to teach our students,” you should expect your professors and other staff to be in concert with your goals.

The pledge, though, has now become a center of controversy. More than fifty professors and staff have resigned rather than sign it. Why? What awful points of doctrine and/or practice are included? Here’s what university employees must agree to:

• No homosexual lifestyle
• No pre-marital sex
• No adultery
• No drug use
• Be an active member of a church
• Live as committed, Bible-believing followers of Jesus Christ

My, how oppressive! A Christian university actually expecting their employees, including professors who are supposed to be teaching within a Biblical worldview, to live as Christians! [Note: I don't usually go overboard using exclamation points, but they seemed to apply this time.]

Let’s keep in mind this is a private Christian university that has the authority to set up whatever ground rules it considers appropriate. Not being involved in sexual immorality and not being a druggie would seem to me to be minimum requirements for any institution that claims to be Christian. Yet, as can be expected, this has created a firestorm.

What bothers me the most about this is that some of those who resigned had been there for many years. One of the librarians was openly homosexual. This university doesn’t seem to have cared a whole lot about its Christian commitment for quite some time. By being lax in its internal discipline, it opened the door for the current controversy. If it had been consistently Christian from the start, this would be no big deal now. Therefore, it is now suffering the consequences of its previous policies.

All that said, I congratulate the university now for its attempt to set things straight, so to speak. But this is an object lesson for all Christian colleges and universities: be warned—you may go through a similar rough patch if you aren’t being faithful to Biblical standards now. We need to keep in mind these bracing words from the apostle Peter:

For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

Indeed.

We’re beginning to see the outlines of how this campaign is going to play out. Helped by his friends in the media, Obama is trying to make Romney look like a bully. It’s almost funny, though. The Washington Post gave front-page status to a story emanating from the time Romney was in high school. Supposedly, he and others forcibly cut the hair of a fellow student who may have had homosexual tendencies. Please forgive my skepticism, as this “story” appeared the day after Obama’s endorsement of homosexual marriage. It was given a prominent place in the newspaper as a counter to those who might disagree with the president’s policy on this issue. See, we’re supposed to think, homosexuals have been treated unfairly, so we need to make up for it now.

Well, the boy who was allegedly bullied can’t speak for himself since he has died. His family is outraged over the story. Romney says he doesn’t recall this specific incident. He does admit that as a teenager he did things that were foolish. He’s probably the only person who ever did foolish things as a teenager, right? I mean, I’m sure the reporters who cobbled this story together were outstanding examples of moral, civilized behavior when they were young.

This is almost beyond ridiculous. Do any of us really want to be held accountable for actions that, in Romney’s case, date back about fifty years? As a teenager? What’s next?

If we really want to search for youthful misbehavior, there are more glaring examples available:

Get over it, media. Try a new tactic, Mr. President. This one diminishes the office you hold almost as much as your policies do.

The saga of Chen Guangcheng is not over. For those who haven’t been following this story, let me summarize. Chen is a blind Chinese human rights activist. China’s policy of limiting the number of children a family can have has led to many forced abortions. Chen’s “crime” was to expose this unbridled government genocide against innocent children. China’s history of disrespect for human rights is well documented.

For this activity, he was sentenced in 2006 to four years in jail. When that sentence expired in 2010, the government kept him under house arrest, turning his home into a fortress of walls, security cameras, and armed guards. Somehow, Chen escaped this house prison and made his way to the American embassy seeking protection and asylum.

This became an embarrassment to the Obama administration in the person of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who didn’t want to offend the Chinese government. Chen’s fate hung in the balance for a few days until he was supposedly allowed to emigrate to the United States as a student. He’s still in China, in a Beijing hospital, and until he actually arrives in the US, his friends and supporters don’t know whether to believe it will happen.

The Obama administration kept Chen twisting in the proverbial political winds for quite some time as it tried to figure out what to do.

Good relations with China almost trumped the life of a brave individual pointing out the abuses of Chinese policy. But then why would Obama care much that China forces abortions? Given his own stand on the issue, I doubt that concerns him. He doesn’t mind turning a “blind” eye to what China is doing. It’s more than a little ironic that the blind man has clearer vision than those who say they can see:

This is only one of a multitude of reasons why this president must be turned out of office this November.

President Obama’s declaration last week that he approves of gay marriage was no surprise to me. In fact, anyone who really believed he wasn’t in favor of it had to be living in a fantasy world. His worldview, which is mainstream radicalism, naturally leads him to it. His professed faith, which departs severely from Biblical roots, is no barrier to it. Already we had seen his administration, through the Department of Justice, refuse to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law during the Clinton years. Attorney General Holder was quite vocal in his refusal. So why would the president’s pronouncement last week be a surprise?

Some wanted to cling to Obama’s previous statements that he was not a proponent of gay marriage, but it should have been obvious to anyone with any critical sense at all that his stance was purely political. Now he has gambled that the nation has moved far enough left that it won’t be a detriment to his reelection. That remains to be seen. Last week, North Carolina became the 30th state to successfully define marriage as between one man and one woman, despite polls that indicate a majority of Americans now support homosexuals getting married. Are those polls accurate?

Those with purely political analyses are saying this move by Obama at this time is meant to take the voters’ minds off the economy:

I do believe that’s part of the strategy, but there’s something deeper at work here: he truly believes in the rightness of his decision:

Those polls I mentioned above could be accurate. We are a nation adrift morally, and it might be true, after a couple of decades of a constant barrage of subtle brainwashing, that most Americans now accept the idea that homosexuality is just a normal way of life for some people, that there is a genetic base for being a homosexual. Unfortunately for those who have jumped on this bandwagon, there is no scientific evidence for any kind of homosexual gene. They are believing a lie.

While I expect Biblically illiterate people to fall for the lie, it’s more disturbing when professed Christians buy into it. They do their best to explain away the explicit passages in Scripture that call homosexuality a sin, but they have to perform some amazing logical and exegetical feats to accomplish it. Frankly, their attempt to downplay the Biblical condemnation of homosexuality falls flat in the face of hard evidence such as that found in the book of Romans. In the first chapter, Paul speaks of those who deny the existence of God as fools, then focuses on how they exchange the truth of God for a lie. One of his examples is homosexuality:

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, … and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

The clear message of Scripture is that homosexuality is unnatural and is a choice; therefore, those who choose to engage in homosexual behavior will suffer consequences for doing so. The last part of the passage is quite fitting for our times when it points to those who not only practice it, but who also push to make the abomination tolerated, and even applauded.

Christians are supposed to be lights in this world. How can we be lights for God and His truth when we excuse sin? We are His priests, according to the New Testament. I was reading yesterday in the Old Testament book of Malachi and came across a stinging rebuke of the priests in his day. I think the rebuke applies to us as well if we deny God’s truth:

For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But as for you, you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by the instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi.

Christians who refuse to call a sin what it really is are misleading others; they are causing others to stumble in their spiritual walk. That’s a serious accusation, but I feel it must be made. Too many who name the name of Christ are at peace with the world’s way of thinking, and they lead others into confusion and sin when they mishandle the Word of God.

Malachi went on to say,

You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, “How have we wearied Him?” In that you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them.”

Sadly, that’s exactly what some self-styled Christian leaders are doing today. And then they make their own disciples who go out and do the same. The error spreads, along with the consequences.

We see the same warning given through the prophet Isaiah:

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!

So what about those of us who may very well be the minority now? What are we to do? Returning to Malachi, we find an answer:

Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name. “They will be Mine,” says the Lord of hosts, “on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.” So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.

We need to distinguish clearly today. We need to know who is a genuine servant of the Lord and who is not. Anyone promoting homosexual marriage has set himself up against the expressed will of God. As Franklin Graham so poignantly put it the other day, President Obama has “shaken his fist at God” in this matter of homosexual marriage. Graham called it “a sad day for America.”

What would be even sadder is if a Christian would vote for a president who has done such a thing. There are many reasons not to allow Obama a second term, but he has now committed an act that should make every Christian reconsider a vote on his behalf. If we vote for him, we are giving our support to this evil. We will have to answer to God directly for that vote.

Ill-gotten gains do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. …

Poor is he who works with a negligent hand, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who acts shamefully. …

He who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will be found out. …

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions. …

Wise men store up knowledge, but with the mouth of the foolish, ruin is at hand. …

He is on the path of life who heeds instruction, but he who ignores reproof goes astray. He who conceals hatred has lying lips, and he who spreads slander is a fool. When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise. …

What the wicked fears will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted.

Political campaigns historically rely on exaggerations to make a point. Of course, “exaggeration” is oftentimes a euphemism for lying. There’s a line that can be crossed, and we need to know when that occurs in order to make an appropriate judgment on whatever accusation is being leveled at an opponent.

I’m predicting this presidential campaign, particularly on the Democrat side, will be one for the ages when it comes to blatant, outright lying. The desire for power, and to be able to keep it, will lead the Obama minions to new depths of mendacity [I had to look up that word once; it's a good one]. How can I say that at this early juncture? First, I don’t know when I’ve seen a president with the particular brand of arrogance that I’ve witnessed in Obama. No one else has ever claimed that his election would begin the process where the earth will heal and the oceans will stop rising. Second, already there have been the usual accusations that Republicans want to throw granny off a cliff, take away everyone’s Social Security, and starve the general population if they can get away with it.

But there’s been a new wrinkle thrown in: the supposed war on women. We’re supposed to believe that Republicans hate women, that they want to take away all contraception, and they want to suppress their ability to lead productive lives. Naturally, at the root of all this “hatred” is the desire to hinder a right to choose abortion. That’s the real bottom line. I have a different way of looking at this: conservatives want to protect innocent human life and not allow selfishness to reign. Here’s my take on the real war on women:

Unfortunately, those on my side of the cultural divide are often intimidated into backing off of the truth. I’m not advocating rudeness or bombastic verbal attacks; those are counterproductive. Yet I encourage those who know what’s wrong to step up and speak up whenever the opportunity arises. The time for intimidation is past. We need to realize that we never will please those entrenched on the other side of the divide. They’ll always find something to critique:

It’s time for boldness while at the same time appealing to those whose minds may still be changed. As the apostle Paul reminds us,

Conduct yourself with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how to respond to each person. … Speak truth, each one of you with his neighbor … [yet] let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as if good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.

A week ago, I wrote a post I called “The Moral Majority?” In it, I outlined two misperceptions I believe are hampering efforts to turn around the culture. The first misperception is that too many of us think we still live in a majority Judeo-Christian society. We think we’ll just eventually come to our senses and everything will be alright. The second misperception is that we can live a Christian life without holiness. We blend too easily into our culture and don’t want to embrace God’s righteous standards. I’d like to follow up on those thoughts.

One of the key reasons, in my view, that we don’t live righteously is the message that the church too often proclaims—a message that doesn’t really require a change of heart and action on our part. We are told continually that God’s love is unconditional, and that He will accept us just as we are. There certainly is truth in those statements, but the implications we attach to them undercut what I would consider real salvation.

Yes, God’s love is unconditional. He loves us in spite of what we have done and what we are. But that’s not the same as saying salvation is unconditional. There are very specific conditions before we can enter into a relationship with the One who unconditionally loves us. First, we need to grasp the nature of sin, the utter selfishness behind it, and how it destroys all that God intends for His creation. Only when we come to grips with the evil that not only infests the world, but permeates us as well, can we take the next step, which is a deep and genuine repentance over the sin that we have allowed to control our lives.

Far too many evangelists, pastors, and para-church organizations skip these steps. They are eager to make converts, so eager at times that they just want people to come forward to the altar without first leading them into an understanding of their sin and the need for repentance. Without these two vital components, though, there can be no salvation. Why? Because the basic problem that separates man from God has not been addressed.

We tell these potential converts that all they have to do is accept what Jesus did for them, and then we assure them they are saved. Those whose hearts were prepared for the message are genuine converts, but I believe the majority have simply given an intellectual assent to the need for a savior and want to have what has sometimes been called “fire insurance.” I mean, who wants to go to hell?

The problem is then compounded when we declare that they can never expect to live up to God’s standards since His demands are too onerous for any of us to achieve. We solemnly assert they will probably keep on sinning as they have done before, but not to worry because they’re going to heaven anyway. We lower the expectations to where they’re already met.

This theology has its manifestation in a bumper sticker I used to see on cars that stated categorically, “Christians aren’t perfect; they’re just forgiven.” It’s almost like saying, “Hey, I’m just as bad as you, but I get to go to heaven.” What a great salvation—I can continue to sin as much as I used to, but I don’t have to bear the consequences.

No, that’s not salvation. And the reason we are a weak church, and the reason we are fuzzy over moral issues like homosexuality, can be traced to the prevalence of this diluted theology.

I am prepared to be called judgmental because of these comments. That’s fine. God has called us to be righteous judges, as long as we cleanse ourselves of hypocrisy and we offer our judgments along with the message of reconciliation. The glorious thing is that God says we can be set free from the power of sin in our lives, but we must begin with a proper recognition of the pernicious nature of that sin and earnestly desire a changed heart. That’s when the atonement of Jesus can flood our hearts with His love, all our past sins can be forgiven, and we can walk in newness of life. The only reason I’m “judgmental” is because I want people to experience victory in their daily lives.

I wrote a post a few days ago about the Obama campaign’s new slogan, “Forward.” It’s so ripe for parody, it’s almost too easy to do. Examples abound, many with the same theme:

What were they thinking by promoting this slogan? The cartoonist Michael Ramirez may have figured it out:

Obamacare is nowhere to be found in any current Obama ads. Wonder why? What does he have that he can tout? Well, one thing:

Maybe you can get the T-shirt:

I realize some have criticized the president for overplaying his hand in this matter. Well, to be honest, I have criticized the president for putting himself front and center and seemingly taking all credit. Perception is the key in campaigns. Perhaps we’ll be seeing this soon:

Try not to get too ill before election day.

If you haven’t seen “The Life of Julia,” you need to Google it. She’s a fictional character created by the Obama campaign to demonstrate how government helps people. If you watch the entire thing, though, you come away with the distinct impression that people—perhaps women, in particular—are utterly helpless without government aid. This campaign ploy is the best/worst advertisement for  the cradle-to-grave nanny state that I’ve seen in some time. “Julia” only succeeds because of government. There is no mention of a family helping her, a husband along the way, certainly nothing spiritual in her supposed “life.” She is the poster child for the zombie nation.

The really scary part about it is how this reveals the worldview/mindset of those in authority in our civil government. “Keep us in power,” they seem to be saying, “and we’ll make you a functioning person, made in our image.” And of course all it takes is more money to accomplish all this. Never mind that programs mentioned in “The Life of Julia,” such as Head Start, don’t actually give anyone a genuine head start. We’re supposed to ignore the data on that and just trust the government knows what it is doing.

Well, we haven’t seen too many examples of that recently, have we? There was the spectacle of the GSA employees, which was undoubtedly only the very tip of the very top of the iceberg of waste.What’s even more disturbing, however, is the false perception that persists among an ever-increasing proportion of our population:

It’s not too late to reverse this whole “government is your big daddy” mindset, but we have to work quickly. Let’s start this November.