Grace

The Book of Romans [4] The Bad News – 1:18-28

Dr Bob

ColosseumPaul, in verses 16-17, has begun to declare the Gospel which defines and motivates his mission. It is the very “power of God”; it is universal, for Jew or Greek (i.e., non-Jewish pagans), and it manifests the righteousness and power of God given as a gift to man, who live by faith.

But there can be no need for the Good News until we come to terms with the Bad News: That man has rejected God, and as a consequence, has turned from righteousness to unrighteousness, with the moral depravity and divine judgement which are the inevitable and certain consequences:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,fn in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Paul begins here with a statement of natural law: that man, by his reason, is capable of knowing God through the evidence of creation. The failure to know God is not one of insufficient knowledge or proof; it is rather a moral choice. Man refuses to acknowledge and submit to God because he, in spiritual darkness because of sin, has corrupted his reason, and now creates gods in his own image or in the image of the lesser creatures of creation.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Paul begins his depiction of man’s descent into moral depravity by his description of the impact on the most fundamental of human behaviors, reproduction and the relationship between men and women. But lest we think that sexual deviancy is the prime manifestation of the unrighteous man, he promptly lists virtually every vice of man. Furthermore, somewhat surprisingly, Paul points to the natural law knowledge of fallen man: they understand that such behavior merits God’s punishment, yet act in evil ways and encourage others to do so.

Key Words

Wrath (Greek:orge): anger, the natural disposition, temper, character; movement or agitation of the soul, impulse, desire, any violent emotion, but esp. anger; wrath, indignation; anger exhibited in punishment, hence used for punishment itself; punishments inflicted by magistrates

Suppress (Greek: katecho): to hold back, detain, retain from going away; to restrain, hinder (the course or progress of)that which hinders, e.g., of Antichrist from making his appearance; to check a ship’s headway i.e. to hold or head the ship; to hold fast, keep secure, keep firm possession of; to get possession of, take, to possess

Futile (Greek: mataioo): to render (passively, become) foolish, i.e. (morally) wicked or idolatrous, to become vain

Darkened (Greek: skotizo): to obscure; to cover with darkness, to darken; to be covered with darkness, be darkened; of heavenly bodies as deprived of light; metaphorically, of the eyes, of the understanding, of the mind

lust (Greek: epithymia): desire, craving, longing, desire for what is forbidden, lust

Gave them up (Greek: paradidomi):

  1. to give into the hands (of another)
  2. to give over into one’s power or use: to deliver to one something to keep, use, to take care of, or manage; to deliver up one to custody; to be judged, condemned, punished, scourged, tormented, put to death; to deliver up treacherously, by betrayal; to cause one to be taken, to deliver one to be taught, moulded
  3. to commit, to commend
  4. to deliver verbally: commands, rites, to deliver by narrating, to report
  5. to permit, allow: when the fruit will allow, that is when its ripeness permits; gives itself up, presents itself

Key Concepts

  • God has made known to man His nature, apart from divine revelation, through the evidence of creation
  • Man has made a moral decision to reject God and worship himself and the things of creation
  • The consequence of this choice is all manner of moral depravity, and ultimately the judgement and condemnation of God
  • That man in his nature understands the evil nature and consequences of his behavior, yet persists in it and encourages others to do so as well

Resources

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

Dr Bob

Before the joys and trials of family get-togethers, the bacchanalian consumption of endless pounds of poultry, and the weariness of holiday travel tempered only by the thrill of a TSA patdown, it is perhaps fitting to pause and reflect a moment on the reason for the season we celebrate this week: Thanksgiving.

Like most of our holidays, Thanksgiving has become commercialized, sterilized, and neutered, long ago detached from its original significance, its spiritual roots withered and wizened, lost in the ever-longer lead-in to the crass commercialism of Christmas. To be sure, we nod in its direction, with cursory platitudes of gratitude for material blessings and bountiful food. Yet our lives betray the truth behind the truisms: we are a most unhappy, ungrateful, ungracious, and resentful lot. We who reside amidst the greatest wealth ever accumulated, suffer from an acquisitive sickness, a deep and abiding unhappiness which even greater and ever more cannot heal. We live in expectation more than acceptance, revenge rather than reconciliation, greed not gratitude. For all we have, we have not peace, and thanksgiving is the farthest thing from our minds and hearts.

So what then of gratitude, of true thanksgiving? It is not the cheap grace of the smug acknowledgment of all we possess, lest we be seen by others as a selfish boor. Nor is it some warm emotion poured forth like spirits from a crystal decanter, transparently empty after its contents are spilt. It is indeed poorly expressed by words alone, which cost far too little to repay our debts.

It is, rather, a proper sense of perspective, grounded in a larger vision of purpose. It recognizes, first and foremost, that we are limited and flawed, not the pinnacle of evolution but the pride — and the problem — of creation. We are magnificently made but fatally flawed; we aspire to the stars but stumble in the mud. What we have is not what we have earned, but we we have been given — and far too often used not for glory but for gain.

Thanksgiving tells us that we have a higher purpose, a calling which draws us toward the divine, in order that His highest purposes are fully served. It tells us we are hopelessly handicapped in our pursuit of this noble calling, waylaid in wanton selfishness and frivolous foolishness, distracted from our goal by baubles and the banal. Indeed there is little hope of restoring our vision but by grace, by the gracious hand of God to guide, empower, and correct us. It is in this extraordinary reality that true gratitude is found, that we who have hated the good have, in spite of ourselves, been called back home, in forgiveness and with vision restored, to be made useful and purposeful again, to be made new.

This grace empowers gratitude, for it opens all things, both good and bad, to the possibility of redemption. For the good we may be grateful, not merely that it blesses us, but that it enables and empowers us to serve and give to others. Our trials and liabilities, too, become tools by which we may reassess and redirect our lives, growing in empathy for the suffering of others, and in trust in the inscrutable goodness and wisdom of God, who uses evil for good. Our thanksgiving is a celebration of freedom — the freedom to transform all things, whether good or evil, to the higher purposes of God.

A cynical and empty culture knows nothing of this miracle of grace, and thus has no gratitude, no graciousness, no humility or hope. We are called, in this season of Thanksgiving, to be a light shining in a dark and empty world, which by disowning transcendence has destroyed its hope.

Let us, then, be truly grateful this Thanksgiving, for the grace of redemption, the hope of transformation, and the mercy shown to us through Him who is most gracious.

Have a most blessed and fruitful Thanksgiving.

On Faith I: Faith & Reason

Dr Bob

TNB_OpeningIn July 1940, an engineering marvel was completed: the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge. One of the longest suspension bridges in the world at the time, it exemplified the light, graceful architectural trend of suspension bridges built in this era. Called the crowning achievement of his career, designer Leon Moisseiff — the architect of the Golden Gate and Bay bridges in San Francisco — later declared “our plans seemed 100% perfect.”
 
 
Yet 4 months later, on November 7 1940, the Narrows Bridge catastrophically collapsed in a windstorm into Puget Sound.

1940: Gertie CollapsesLeon Moisseiff had unshakable faith in the reliability of his newly-completed masterpiece. He would have had no qualms whatsoever trusting its dependability in any weather conditions. Yet had he stood upon his own creation on November 7th, 1940, his faith would have been fatal. The object of his faith was unreliable, and the strength of his faith irrelevant.
 
 

Faith has become the diametric of reason … practiced only by deluded fools who reject the graceful catenary and steel-plate certainty of scientific rationalism.

Faith is an idea frequently voiced, but little understood. It is commonly mentioned in the pejorative sense in today’s secular society, where it has become a proxy for belief in the unbelievable, the unprovable, the superstitious and the mythical. Faith has become the diametric of reason — unreasonably so, as we shall see — practiced only by deluded fools who reject the graceful catenary and steel-plate certainty of scientific rationalism.

Yet faith–not love–makes the world go ’round. You exercise faith when you place the key in the ignition and start your car. You have faith when you flip a switch, expecting light to rush forth from a fixture, or music from stereo speakers. You have faith that your coat will keep you warm and dry; your plane will stay aloft; your surgeon will bring you through a heart bypass. The atheist has utter faith in his reason, that belief in God is beyond logic and therefore must be rejected. Such faith is nothing more than trust: a confidence that the object is reliable, the tool is trustworthy, its behavior predictable, its nature dependable. In the physical realm, such trust may be based in part on knowledge — one can study the flow of electrons and principles of resistance which make a light bulb glow — but such erudition is entirely optional, and rarely grasped by those who rely on its behavior. The object of faith may be entirely reliable yet utterly beyond our comprehension — or, as Leon Moisseiff discovered to his great dismay, deeply understood yet profoundly unreliable.
 
Continue reading “On Faith I: Faith & Reason” →

The Coming Cataclysm

Dr Bob

It is late in the day, and few are prepared for the darkness coming. The signs, it seems, are everywhere:

U.S. Treasury 2009 Financial Report Shows Dire Course

The Treasury Department recently issued the 2009 financial report of the United States government. … the annual report is untainted by creative accounting but also because its message is too important to ignore.

That message is that the sky is indeed falling…

…simple addition indicates that the total net position of the government is a whopping negative $57.4 trillion… if current policies are left unchecked U.S. government debt held by the public will increase from approximately 80 percent of GDP today to 700 percent in 2080.

The Fiscal Nightmare of the Welfare State

Bloggers post what they claim to be the scariest economic chart or the chart of the century. Indeed, many data sets are frightening, but none more so than the tables found here. This data shows incontrovertibly that modern government has failed. These countries are all insolvent and will eventually default.

All Western democracies are on death row. The unlimited welfare state is the cause. Some governments are delusional, believing they can continue on their present paths. Others cling irrationally to hopes of some miraculous reprieve. All are dead men walking.

Is Greece Just the Tip of the Iceberg?

Virtually every country in the EU spends more than it takes in and has made long-term fiscal promises to an aging work force that it can’t keep … Europe would have to have the equivalent of roughly $60 trillion in the bank today to fund its very general welfare benefits in the future. Of course, it doesn’t.

Today, Greece is only the tip of a very large iceberg.

America in the Red

America is digging itself into a deep fiscal hole. In 2009, the federal government spent $3.5 trillion, but took in only $2.1 trillion in revenue — thus spending $1.67 for every dollar it collected. The resulting $1.4 trillion deficit was equivalent to 10% of the nation’s economic output, the highest percentage since the end of World War II. America’s publicly held debt now totals $7.5 trillion, about 53% of gross domestic product — the highest it has been in more than 50 years.

These figures are alarming, but they pale in comparison to budget projections for the years ahead… By 2020, the United States would owe more than $20 trillion, the equivalent of about 85% of GDP. At that point, interest payments alone would consume about $900 billion a year — almost five times as much as they did in 2009.

The outlook grows even more bleak when we account for the ongoing retirement of the Baby Boomers and further increases in public spending on health care… The twin pressures of increased entitlement spending and slowing revenue growth mean that the debt will skyrocket — to roughly 200% of GDP in 2035, under one CBO scenario — unless there are dramatic cutbacks in all other government activities or an equally dramatic increase in taxes.

The euro crisis is a judgment on the great lie of ‘Europe’

We have still scarcely begun to wake up to the gravity of the crisis now upon us, not just for the eurozone but also for us here in Britain and for the entire global economy. The measures so far taken to prop up the collapsing euro, such as that famous “$1 trillion package”, are no more than gestures.

Greece was just the antipasto: Italy, Spain, Portugal and others are now hanging over an abyss of debt which scarcely all the money in Europe could fill – created by countries living way beyond their means, thanks not least to the euro’s low interest rates. The only possible consequence of the collapse of one of the world’s leading currencies, leaving Europe with no money to trade in, would be utter chaos…

…If the euro does disintegrate … the consequences would be incalculable … Without a currency, trade would collapse – leaving Britain, dependent on Europe for 50 per cent of its trade, just as seriously affected as everyone else. A system failure on this scale would make the 1930s pale into insignificance…

Dow Theorist Richard Russell: Sell Everything, You Won’t Recognize America By The End Of The Year

Do your friends a favor. Tell them to “batten down the hatches” because there’s a HARD RAIN coming. Tell them to get out of debt and sell anything they can sell (and don’t need) in order to get liquid. Tell them that Richard Russell says that by the end of this year they won’t recognize the country. They’ll retort, “How the dickens does Russell know — who told him?” Tell them the stock market told him…

… If the two Averages violate their May 7 lows, I see a major crash as the outcome. Pul – leeze, get out of stocks now, and I don’t give a damn whether you have paper losses or paper profits!

Is Europe heading for a meltdown?

The Bank of England Governor summed it up best: “Dealing with a banking crisis was difficult enough,” he said the other week, “but at least there were public-sector balance sheets on to which the problems could be moved. Once you move into sovereign debt, there is no answer; there’s no backstop.” … Politicians temporarily “solved” the sub-prime crisis of 2007 and 2008 by nationalizing billions of pounds’ worth of bank debt. While this helped reinject a little confidence into markets, the real upshot was merely to transfer that debt on to public-sector balance sheets. This kind of card-shuffle trick … is not so different to the Ponzi scheme carried out by Bernard Madoff, except that unlike his hedge fund fraud, this one is being carried out in full public view.

No worries, mate — sleep well.

Of course, this is merely the opinion of the pessimists, who, if they predict calamity long enough will eventually prove right. The optimists say: no worry, the economy’s getting stronger, and once that bipartisan commission on deficit reduction reaches its conclusions we’ll just spend our way out of this crisis, just like we always have in the past…

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury is buying its own T-bills to artificially suppress interest rates; states are going bankrupt, issuing IOUs instead of tax refunds or civil service salaries; and are funding their public pension plans … by borrowing the money from their public pension plans. Sweet! Let’s pay off our credit card debt by putting it on our credit card!

I’m no economist, but it seems blindingly obvious that the current global economic climate is extraordinarily fragile, and seems poised for an cataclysmic meltdown. Even without a black swan — a hot war in the Middle East or Korea; a mass casualty terrorism attack here or abroad; a huge natural disaster or another financial meltdown like September 2008 — the whole house of cards is poised to collapse, catastrophically. The timing is unknown, but the inevitability clear. The players are hard-wired: the Ponzi scheme of being paid today with tomorrows dollars is a powerful drug, intoxicating to both those who deal and those strung out on its increasingly delusional indulgence. And the addicts will not lie down meekly when the dealer runs dry.

Beyond the obviousness of this impending crisis lies our stunning unpreparedness to face the chaos which most surely ensue. As David Warren writes,

Europeans, outside the Nazi-Fascist Axis, and North Americans were as utterly unprepared for the horsemen of the apocalypse riding their way in the 1930s, as we are today. In fact, they were materially less well-prepared, though spiritually perhaps rather sounder. Nevertheless, the spirit of denial, which includes the desire to focus on problems that aren’t real, to avoid staring at the real ones, was so alive in our predecessors that their naiveté has become our cliché.

But I think the tests we face from abroad may, this time around, be matched by the tests we face domestically. And for those I think we are even less prepared… we are living out lives in which the focus of our attention is constantly displaced from the here and now, towards any number of fidgeting external distractions, in a “virtual reality” that disappears in the first moment of a power failure. So that, when something happens in the here and now, transcending the technological order, and muting all sources of external entertainment, we are at a loss.

How or when this cataclysm will play out is pure speculation — a speculation in which I may indulge, time and grace permitting, in coming days. Our leaders have arrogantly boasted: “Never let a crisis go to waste.” While theirs is the opportunism of self-destructive power, we too should not waste the opportunity afforded us by this impending implosion to make the most of that which soon threatens to burst upon us in ways most frightening and unpredictable.

Now is the time to become grounded, to set aside frivolous things and focus on that which is permanent, unshakable, and sure. The time to do so surely is short.

Letter from an Apostle – II: Known & Chosen

Dr Bob

An ongoing study of the epistle 1 Peter.

  1. Letter from an Apostle – Background

  • 1:1 — This letter is from Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to God’s chosen people who are living as foreigners in the lands of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, the province of Asia, and Bithynia.

The apostle Peter, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus, appears frequently throughout the Gospels and the book of Acts. He was a fisherman, chosen by Jesus, and one of the inner circle of the disciples. He was present at the transfiguration of Jesus; in the garden of Gethsemane; at his trial, where he denied Jesus; and was appointed by Jesus to lead his Church. By declaring himself an apostle (apostolos)– a specific claim to have been appointed directly by Christ to teach and lead His Church — Peter is declaring his authority to speak on behalf of Christ Himself.

He addresses his epistle to those “chosen” of God and “foreigners”, in areas located in modern-day Turkey. The imagery here is strikingly similar to that used of the Jewish people, who also were spoken of God’s chosen people, many of whom represented a diaspora spread throughout the ancient world.

We do not know if Peter was writing to these churches which he himself had founded, or to Christians whom he had evangelized, or whether he was speaking to those he had never met, in his office as the chief of the apostles. He does not mention specific individuals — unlike many of Paul’s letters — which may suggest he himself had not founded these churches.
 

The use of the term “foreigners” (or “sojourners” or “pilgrims”) speaks to those who are not natives in the land in which they dwell. This suggests that these were either converted Jews of the Diaspora (for Peter was the apostle to the Jews), or perhaps Gentile Christians who had emigrated to Asia minor. As Peter will develop later in the epistle, however, there is also a sense of the Christian in the world as a pilgrim: a foreigner traveling to a world not his own, while a citizen of heaven.

  • 1:2a — God the Father knew you and chose you long ago…

“God the Father…”

This is shockingly and intensely personal. It is not God the Creator; God the lawgiver; God of judgment; God unapproachable, inscrutable, unknown. This is family: this God, although vastly above us and beyond our understanding, nevertheless considers us children, family, friends. This is a stunning contrast to the religions of this and every age, with gods either mythical, or vengeful, or distant and impersonal. This is a God of profound love, of tenderness, of mercy, of gentleness; a teacher, a guardian, a guide, a defender. Even among the Jews, who worshiped and served the same God, there was no sense of such intimate personality; theirs was the Yahweh of Sinai and the burning bush, a God to be feared and obeyed but surely not befriended. The God whom Peter came to know through Jesus Christ was an utterly new revelation, a profound paradigm shift in man’s understanding of God.

“God the Father knew you…”

We are known: intimately, throughout eternity, in every moment and every aspect of our lives. This is not mere familiarity, nor faint acquaintance: this is full, complete, transparent knowledge, that of the Creator fully comprehending His own creation.

We are known: in all our greed and selfishness; in our gossip and backstabbing; in our anger, and deceit, and hatred, and arrogance. The God of eternity, transcending time, knows our every moment, our every thought, our every action, our birth and death and all that lies between. “Every hair on your head is counted” — there is naught that is hidden, every corner of your soul, every cell of your body is known by God, throughout eternity.

We are known: not only in our deep rebellion and sinfulness, but in the glory which we might bring Him, and His purposes which we may serve. We are known in our fullest and highest potential; the goodness which God can bring about when we are once again restored to Him, empowered by Him, guided and gifted through Him. In this too we are known.

We are creatures of time; we have a beginning, and an end, and the sequence of minutes, hours, and days which pass between, one after another. Yet the God who knows us is above and outside time; He is eternal, unbounded by that which He has created. Every moment of our lives is now for God; He inhabits our past, our future, our eternity with Him yet to come: these are present to Him, who transcends time and redeems it.

“God the Father knew you and chose you…”

To be chosen: to be accepted in whole, unreservedly, unconditionally. This is the very deepest need of man; our rejection by God and man fosters an endless parade of human misery, suffering, pathos and pathology. Our entire lives are spent seeking the acceptance of others, and failing to find in them the acceptance which is our very life. Deep within each of us dwells a bottomless abyss, into which we pour an endless train of insufficient and destructive detritus. We seek to fill the abyss with material goods; with drugs, or alcohol, or food, or sex; we seek relationships, hoping through them to fill that void — then destroy those relationships when they fail to accomplish what they are utterly incapable of fulfilling. Neither power, nor money, nor eminence, nor the esteem of others will suffice. Only to be chosen by God; to be accepted, fully, unconditionally, eternally by Him: this alone fills the despondent destitution within — for that emptiness was made to be filled with naught but God Himself.

And we are chosen, not because we have earned this esteemed position; not because our behavior has made us worthy, nor our status gained God’s attention, nor our inflated self-worth merited his favor and mandated his choice. We are chosen: broken, failures, rebellious, arrogant, fully worthy of utter rejection — yet by grace, plucked from the mire of hopeless self-destruction and empty, purposeless lives, for the sole reason that we are loved, and that this love can transform us from something useless and empty to something purposeful and valued. We are chosen because we are loved, though unworthy, and because we may become empowered by our choosing to manifest that same love to a lost, desperate world.

We were chosen long ago — as we measure time.

Yet the time of our choosing is now, if we will but accept it.

Taking the Blue Pill, Rather than the Hip Replacement

Dr Bob

As the Democrats in Congress press forward in blind determination to pass their health care reform legislation come hell or high water, the pernicious effects of the legislation are increasingly becoming evident to anyone who takes the time to dig into its details. Though our Congressional representatives cannot seem to find the time to read these gargantuan, 2000-page bills, busy as they are padding their pockets with filthy lucre from lobbyists and interest groups, those at the state level who are will be responsible for picking up the credit card bills from this monomaniacal spending spree are starting to sweat. Even the Blue states — no strangers to fantasy spending budgets, punitive taxes, and political giveaways — can see the handwriting on the wall.

Out here in scenic Washington — where Patty Murray is considered an astute statesman and Jim McDermott is considered sane — the details of Obamacare are becoming frighteningly clear:

Washington has a 13.2% uninsured rate and one half of these people are in the age range of 18-34. Because of the bill’s individual mandate that would require every adult to buy health insurance, 432,000 young healthy people in the state would be forced to make this purchase … The bill also requires a community rating price control on all policies which would cause these young Washingtonians to pay a higher price for coverage, while older, sicker individuals would pay less for their insurance.

There is something of a sweet irony here: those who voted overwhelmingly for Obama and who much prefer spending money on grunge music, Hempfests, and gas masks are about to wake up and find themselves paying hefty premiums to greedy insurance corporations, or facing big fines or jail time for refusing to do so — proving there truly is Karma in the world.

The Avatar-blue seasoned citizens will likewise find themselves unpleasantly surprised:

On the other end of the age spectrum, 890,000 seniors have Medicare coverage in Washington. Congress plans to finance the Senate bill in part by cutting Medicare by $471 billion. Physician reimbursement would be reduced by 21%, while Medicare Advantage would essentially be eliminated, forcing 205,000 Washington seniors out of the program and back into traditional Medicare. Access to doctors is already a problem for Washington seniors because of low Medicare payments compared to private insurance. Further cuts in how much Medicare pays doctors will only make this access problem worse for seniors.

In fairness here, the 21% cut in physician reimbursements is by no means certain: Congress has consistently blocked these “budget neutrality” cuts in the past (to prevent a mass exodus of physicians willing to see Medicare patients), even though they use the imaginary $250 billion “savings” as part of the budgetary chicanery to make Obamacare look affordable.

But Medicare Advantage plans are squarely in the sights of the Congressional cost-cutting guns. These plans provide benefits to Medicare patients using private health insurance, typically providing much better benefits than Medicare alone while costing less than expensive supplemental plans which merely cover Medicare’s substantial co-pays and deductibles. MAs are very popular — 30-40% of Medicare-eligible patients use Advantage plans, and the percentage has been growing rapidly. The drastic slash in funding for MA plans will result in benefit cuts and stiff premium hikes, driving many patients back to traditional Medicare, drastically ratcheting up out-of-pocket expenses for the elderly and cutting many of their benefits.

And it should be stressed that physician access problems in Medicare patients (it is extremely difficult in Washington to find primary care physicians who accept new Medicare patients, and the specialists are fast bringing up the rear given Medicare’s drastic cuts in fees to specialists) are not simply about low payments, and greedy doctors wanting more money; it is about reimbursing physicians to provide care at levels substantially lower than their overhead costs.

Quite simply, when you see a Medicare patient, you lose money.

Of course, you don’t have to be young or on Medicare to reap the benefits of health care reform:

Almost 130,000 Washington residents have health savings accounts (HSAs) and high deductible insurance plans. The Senate bill reduces the HSA contribution amount by one half and doubles the penalty for non-medical withdrawals. New government limitations will probably eliminate high deductible policies and consequently eliminate HSAs. All HSA holders would lose their personal coverage and be forced to buy traditional insurance.

The Seattle area has growing industries in biotech and medical device manufacturing. The Senate bill would add a 10% to 20% tax on these businesses. The cost would either be passed on to consumers or, more likely, would cause a reduction in medical research and development.

Almost 2.7 million workers and their family members in Washington receive health insurance through their employers’ self-insured programs. These people would be allowed to keep their insurance for five years. The plans must then comply with strict government benefit plans which would cause many employers to drop their coverage and force many workers to join a government plan. In addition, generous employer-sponsored insurance will be subject to a new 40% tax. In three years, 20% of all workers will be paying this tax and in six years, 20% of all households making more than $50,000 a year will have to pay this tax.

And then there’s Medicaid — coverage for the poor co-funded by federal and state governments. Obamacare extends health insurance to the uninsured poor by greatly expanding Medicaid, which is already well on its way to bankrupting the states:

Under the Senate-passed bill the number of Medicaid recipients in Washington would immediately increase by over 280,000 people. The federal taxpayers would initially pay for these new enrollees, but within five years state taxpayers would be forced to pay at least $6.8 billion more over the following ten years. The total cost of Medicaid to Washington taxpayers would then be nearly $36 billion for that ten year period. Access to doctors for Medicaid patients is even worse than for Medicare patients because of lower doctor reimbursement rates. Adding hundreds of thousands of people to Medicaid, when these patients are already being turned away by doctors, makes no sense for either patients or taxpayers.

This is fiscal insanity, akin to buying a ticket for passage on the Titanic after it has hit the iceberg.

Washington State is hardly alone in its terror about the coming health care regime. California, whose credit rating is shakier than a welfare queen on crack, is looking at financial and medical Armageddon as well. From the New York Times:

The [California Medicaid] program, known as Medi-Cal, currently serves roughly 6.5 million poor Californians. And that number could increase by 2 million under the pending legislation. Congress wants to use the Medicaid program as a way to cover more of the uninsured poor, reasoning that it’s a relatively cheap way to go by relying on existing programs.

But doctors say only a third of the state’s 60,000 practicing physicians are participating in the program because of low reimbursement rates, and they fear that more physicians will opt out.

“Increasing eligibility for Medi-Cal without increasing reimbursement rates would be catastrophic,” said Brennan Cassidy, president of the 35,000-member California Medical Association. “There’s no place for those patients to go for primary care because doctors aren’t accepting them.”

Again, the problem is not merely “low reimbursements” — it is Medicaid payment rates which cover less than half a physician’s costs to see the patient.

It is difficult to overstate how disastrous the pending Congressional legislation will be for health care and our nation’s financial stability. Are we really getting ready to jump off this precipice?

Sadly, it appears so.

Life in the Necropolis

Dr Bob

The recent arrest of Roman Polanski for statutory rape with a 13-year-old girl has peeled back the veil covering our cultural decay. Numerous artists, directors, and other Hollywood celebrities and powerbrokers have come out and condemned the arrest, while rationalizing his behavior and condemning what they see as unjust punishment. The public response to this has been somewhere between shock and revulsion, with many commentators, even the New York Times editorial page, expressing surprise and dismay at Hollywood’s response to a man who drugged and raped a minor.

Yet in the midst of the outrage about the crime and the response of media celebrities, there have been few if any who have grasped the implications of what this event and its response have uncovered. One can sense this confusion in the many commentaries speculating about the motives of an entertainment industry which seemingly approves and applauds such heinous behavior.

In our postmodern and post-Christian culture, we yet collectively retain an innate sense of wrong or evil behavior, while often being unable to define exactly why we find depredations such as Polanski’s reprehensible. We become even more bewildered when we encounter large swaths of seemingly intelligent individuals embracing and rationalizing such behavior. Remnants of a common moral and ethical framework for society remain, but significant segments of it no longer ascribe to the premises upon which it is based. We are faced with a new religion; a secular faith, morally amorphous and maddeningly incoherent. Yet it is rapidly becoming the dominant denomination and worldview of much of our culture.

It seems perhaps odd to describe a philosophical worldview which rejects any notion of God or moral absolutes as religion. Yet it is very much a moral and ethical framework, albeit one with considerable potential for cognitive dissonance, intellectual incoherence, and moral confusion. This growing secular orthodoxy finds its roots predominantly among those whose political leanings are leftist or progressive, although it is by no means exclusively confined to them, and may be found in its variants among libertarians and even conservatives.

What then are the doctrines and dogmas, if you will, of this rather confusing and contradictory confession?

In traditional religious understandings, especially that of the three great monotheistic faiths, the moral framework resides in absolutes established and communicated by a transcendent Being. While the specifics of what such absolutes entail and demand vary from one religious tradition to another, they all share the precept that human behavior is judged against the standards of a God, and that these standards exist above and apart from man himself. They are by their very nature transcendent. The behavior of man is judged against these unchanging principles, and resulting shortfalls ultimately must be redressed, either by compensatory good works, judgment, or by forgiveness and grace.

This secular religion, in contrast, posits the moral compass within the mind, exclusively. It is fundamentally Gnostic in nature. The morality of a given behavior is no longer judged based on a transcendent standard given and administered by a divine judge, but is rather graded by the knowledge or beliefs of the individual (or group) in question. Simply put, it is the belief system of the individual rather than his or her behavior which is the ultimate determinant of good or evil.

This core conviction gives rise to what appears to those who do not ascribe to this worldview to be a rather stunning propensity for hypocrisy. The identical behavior of two individuals, one of whom believes the “right” things, the other of whom believes the “wrong” things, will be judged in diametrically opposite ways. Those whose beliefs and politics are “correct” will have their errant behavior minimized, rationalized, justified, or ignored, while those whose beliefs are “incorrect” will be viciously condemned and castigated, despite high motives and noble intent. Our instinctive inclination to judge behavior against an unchanging moral absolute finds such arbitrary precepts irrational and frustrating — as indeed they are not really absolutes at all. What we are observing in practice is a guiding principle far removed from our instinctual dependence on moral law. That which is contradictory, hypocritical, and irrational when viewed from a traditional moral framework is in fact entirely predictable once we understand that the seat of moral judgment resides in what the individual believes, rather than what the individual does.

Postmodernism posits the notion of “narratives”, which are an understanding of culture and society largely determined by those in power. It specifically rejects the notions of Divine lawgiver or transcendent moral absolutes as mere narratives of religious power centers whose intent is to control. For the postmodernist, all behavior will ultimately be judged against their own narrative rather than an absolute which transcends culture and time. What the religionist views as a transcendent absolute is seen as nothing more than another narrative by the postmodernist — a narrative imposed by religious and paternalistic authority solely for the purpose of controlling the flock. The intersection of these two radically different worldviews makes compromise and communication virtually impossible between them, since there is no common framework of understanding or language to bridge the gap.

Even seeming linguistic commonalities lead to confusion in the interface between these cultures. For the traditionalist, the concept of evil, for example, represents a violation of moral absolutes, by individuals ultimately held responsible for their actions. In the postmodernist vocabulary, evil is corporate, embodied in institutions and groups, and is a social construct rather than a moral one. The rejection of absolute truth, and the resulting repudiation of reason as a basis for judgment, creates an exasperating comfort with contradiction, where cognitive dissonance is the norm, and that which is emotionally compelling or strongly believed becomes Truth by the mere force of conviction driven home by relentless repetition and coercive groupthink. The term “evil” thus no longer serves a universal meaning across the culture, and its use sows confusion rather than commonality. One could multiply examples without end from the linguistic miasma of politically correct speech, politics, and the mind-numbing inanity of popular culture.

The postmodern philosophy, now thoroughly inculcated throughout the culture through the vehicles of media, academia, entertainment, and politics, has created a fertile soil for the disintegration of a culture based on Western values of rationalism, moral restraint, and the sanctity and dignity of human individualism. Postmodernism is ideally suited for two outcomes: the acquisition of power, and libertinism. Power is acquired through the ruthless dismissal of all moral restraints in the achievement of pursued goals (morals serve only to advance the narrative, and may be redefined as the need arises); through the reinvention and redefinition of language to deceive and confuse; through the demonization of all who oppose the goal as the embodiment of evil; and through the erosive and relentless undermining of the traditional societal and moral constraints which oppose the desired cultural and political changes.

While at the cultural and political level this bequeaths a brutish and divisive social milieu, enforcing a collective coerced conformity of thought and speech, at the individual level, paradoxically, the very opposite occurs. Non-conformity becomes the norm, as radical individualism and autonomy breeds a disdain for restraint in appearance, behavior, and speech. With the loss of the notion that man is a reflection of a divine Creator, and accountable to a higher Being or Law, the individual must compensate for his devaluation (for we are, after all, just cosmic accidents) by becoming ever more outlandish and outrageous in ways self-destructive, offensive to others, and hideous. Michael Jackson becomes our Dorian Gray — as the rotting necropolis of the spirit seeps through the grave clothes we have so carefully wrapped, having whitewashed the entombed soul with plastic surgery, slick production, Photoshop edits and high fashion. Our Ferragamos and facelifts, our tattoos and painted toes, are but weathered signposts on the rutted road to the expansive wasteland of our inner desolation.

In this postmodern desert, where higher purpose and divine restraint are nowhere to be found, all behavior becomes subject to the self-referential and self-justifying emotionalism of self-gratification. Tolerance becomes the standard by which we increasingly accept the intolerable; only restraint, tradition, and religion remain as worthy of contempt, bigotry, depreciation, or outright hatred. Since there is no evil, evil thrives, ever becoming the norm in a cultured stripped of decency, respect, modesty, and self-sacrifice. There is but one fixed point on the postmodernist’s map: the self. With no true North to fix its moral position, the compass needle swings wildly in every direction, resting only on its own center.

The ironic truth of godless postmodernism is that its gods are legion — and they are merciless. The cruel god of Age destroys the fatuous goddess of Beauty. Gaia, worshiped in rituals of trivial privations by pitiful men and the emptied treasuries of nations, hurtles her planet relentlessly to chaos and destruction, in turns by heat or cold, despite those proffered drink offerings. The god of Human Progress weaves delusional hopes of Utopia as humankind bewitched by her visions hurtles violently downward toward Hell. The deities of science and technology deliver not sought-after salvation but ever more frightening sorcery whereby man may be enslaved, devalued, depraved, and destroyed. The worship of the trees, the sycophantic paeans to science, the lugubrious celebration of joyless lust, do naught to appease the gods: the world remains utterly beyond our control, dangerous and unpredictable and profoundly unsatisfying.

And so we turn back to the Dream: the Utopian vision of a world at peace, unified and prosperous, where all problems resolve propitiously as Mankind becomes One, while religious bigotry, ignorance and superstition fade to black. It is always but one more revolution away. But the ethereal vision remains just out of reach, its ephemeral promises an illusion. As we grasp at the shadow in the mists, rather than finding hope we find hatred; rather than finding tranquility, tyranny; rather than finding Paradise we discover a sordid pit of perdition, as our promised deliverance devolves into deviancy and our perceived blessings into barbarism.

It is a dark road down which we travel, made the more frightening by the delusional grandiosity of those whose vision propels us forward. One wishes, were it possible, to stand astride a generation gone mad and scream, Stop!! — in hopes that even some might heed, and awaken to the disaster before them. But even such might prove to no avail; the delusion is powerful, and obsessive, and intoxicating, and relentless.

And the road ahead seems likely to be littered with extraordinary wreckage.

Deep Waters

Dr Bob

The following essay was originally posted in June 2005. The story is a true one, although the names have been changed.

 
Lake ClarkThey say that hell is hot. Sometimes, however, it is very, very cold.

Jim loved Alaska — it had been his home since birth. God’s country: wild, unpredictable, spectacular in beauty–there was no place like it on earth. Cities were a necessary evil, with their services and surliness, but out in the wild was where life could be found. Out among the glaciers, the ragged mountains framing the endless blue sky like jagged, broken glass, out where grizzlies snatched salmon from raging rapids, shortening their march to death as they fought wild currents to reach their spawning grounds. Out where eagles graced the sky, soaring above green fir spires and spotless snow fields. Out where God lived, where a man could see His hand, and hear His voice.

Jim lived a simple life of simple faith. He loved his wife as he loved the land, and together they were blessed with six children–three older girls, the twin boys, and a baby son their most recent gift. Each was a treasure greater than the next. Their lives were story book: The lodge they owned nestled near the shores of Lake Clark, a large inland glacial sea, mirroring the snow-peaked mountains surrounding it. Summers were busy–hunting and fishing tours, visitors from afar seeking trophies and photographs, decked in newly-purchased gear from REI in the lower 48. Jim loved to fly–the float planes lifted gracefully from the lake, carrying their awestruck passengers over endless miles of breathtaking beauty to some far-away stream where tied flies touched water and fish broke airborne for their last meal.

Out in the bush, relationships were few in number but rich and deep. Church was more than a Sunday obligation–it was a place where life was shared, joys celebrated, suffering comforted–a place where faith begot works, where love put on snowshoes and helped stack the winter’s wood. Family life was alive, ripe with blueberries picked, hikes to the falls, and quiet nights beside campfires. Summers passed quickly at Bible camp, concentric ripples of cannonballs and giggles of joy rolling across the lake from the old dock. Dates with dad and high tea with mom found no competition from mindless cartoons, and bedtime prayers thanked Jesus for His goodness and God for His gifts.

Winter was time for quiet reflection, as the short days and deep snows kept sportsmen far away, and school and indoor chores made the time pass slowly but with purpose. The plane was their lifeline: what few roads there were became impassible in deep snow, and flights to Anchorage a necessity for supplies and health care. The girls came along often, although the younger boys stayed with friends and relatives for lack of space.

Jim had tens of thousands of hours of flying experience, a skill which paid rich dividends in the harsh, capricious winters of south Alaska–there was little in the way of flying conditions he had not challenged and mastered. So this flight to Anchorage in February was a pleasant surprise: the low gray skies broke open to display the rare winter glory of sunshine on pristine snowfields, the glorious tinted rim of Alaska Range peaks and deep seas of Cook Inlet. The supplies garnered and the girls’ dental care completed, they took off for the return flight to home and hearth.

The storm struck without warning, a white she-devil blown in from the Gulf, the Cessna buffeted by sharp, hard winds as visibility and ceiling dropped precipitously. The instruments held true, and countless hours of difficult flying forged Jim’s nerves steely and his focus intent. Mom held the girls’ hands, distracting them from natural fears with songs and stories and heads held to breast, her own pounding heart betraying her calm demeanor. “Will we be OK, mommy?” “Jesus will bring us home, honey.”

The GPS told Jim they were indeed near home–the lighthouse in space beaconing safety and rest. By reckoning they should be near the lake, just a few miles out from the landing strip. But Nature had not finished yet, her rage reserved for one final blow.

A whiteout in a small plane is dreadful beyond imagining. Suspended between earth and sky, with no point of reference, no sense of up or down, sensory deprivation in a aluminum rocket. Your training trusts your instruments, but instinct and eyes scream for visual confirmation. There! On the right! Through a brief window in the suffocating white blindfold, a dark line: the outline of the lake shore. Jim banked the plane toward this beacon of hope. “Are we home yet, daddy?” “Almost there, honey.”

But wild Nature held one last vengeance: an atypical winter thaw had opened a long dark crack in the ice, normally frozen solid in February. The line Jim saw was not the shore. The plane hit water at airspeed.

The prop and windshield exploded. The cabin filled instantly with icy water, as Jim craned his neck to reach the fast-retreating air, still restrained by his harness. Years of wilderness training sprung to life, as without a thought he grabbed his Bowie and cut free the webbing. He struggled with the girls’ restraints, hopelessly locked between seats crumpled by the impact. His wife was nowhere to be seen. Time was up–the air was gone. He broke from the cabin, gasping for air at the surface, hoping to dive and try again to free his treasures. It was not to be: the plane sank like a millstone, 600 feet to the bottom of the frozen fjord, entombing the family he worshiped.

In shock, he looked around. His wife, by some miracle, thrown from the plane at impact, had struggled to the surface and clung to a floating berg. Spared from a frigid tomb, they stood on a fragile shelf of thin and breaking ice. Over two miles from the shore, clothing soaked through in sub-zero temperatures, their survival was still a loser’s bet. Slowly they worked their way shoreward, breaking through the ice at times, body temperatures dropping despite their exhausting physical efforts. Guided by some hand unseen, they finally fell exhausted on shore, finding shelter in an empty lodge. Blinded by cold and head trauma sustained in the crash, Jim was led into the cabin by his wife, who cut off his frozen clothes and started a fire.

Friends awaiting their arrival grew anxious, and the Air National Guard was called. A Pavehawk helicopter–battling the same merciless weather–located the crash site, and ultimately reached them at the cabin. Even then, they could not be evacuated, as conditions grounded the rescue helicopter until morning. A friend flew a Piper cub–braving the same horrendous storm–to bring arctic sleeping bags and warm food. Bravery, love, and duty had spared their lives.

Months passed. Physical healing came quickly, but the rawness of heart wept like an open sore, gently salved by friends and faith, prayers and potlucks, tears and thankfulness. The boys were precious as never before, but the emptiness of heart left by a lost child cannot be filled. The rage at God passes–slowly–as strength flows from trust born of countless old decisions to set aside self and act in faith. But the memories remain–the laughter lost, the peace of a sleeping child, the love of a flower picked, the unexpected hug. There is no answer to “why?“–only time, and trust, and talk, and the tender whispering of a gentle Spirit. Yet one haunting regret refused to die: the vasectomy Jim had undergone after their last son–expeditious at the time, financially prudent–was now a self-imposed prison in a home filled with people, yet achingly empty.

And so they sat in my office, seeking my skills to restore what no man should be asked to provide–hope and happiness. And they told their story, my heart aching with each small detail disclosed. Jim was a man of enormous character and strength, his wife still bearing the unspeakable pain on her face–yet there was no shame in the tears that welled up in their eyes. As I gently probed deeper with almost unseemly curiosity, I was drawn in by the most remarkable revelation: these two would stand. Theirs was a strength not merely of hardiness, or training, or steely denial hiding a dying heart, but of power beyond the means of any mortal. They had faced the hell that men fear even to consider, and conquered it. There was glory in their weeping, victory in their agony. They would never be alone, and never be defeated. I, the proud expert, felt strangely insignificant in their presence.

The surgery went well, and early recovery smoothly. As I spoke with Jim before he left for home, he talked about the girls who had loved their daddy and whom he still loved so deeply. “You know, if I could fly to heaven and bring them back, they would not want to come. Their happiness is complete, ours still unfulfilled. Jesus has indeed brought them home.”