God's Choice or Man's

Spoiler alert: this post is an in-house argument that will bore non-believers.

There is a debate within the Church that has been going on since at least the fourth century. The early church considered arguments from a British monk named Pelagius and Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, and in 418 finally denounced Pelagius' view and upheld Augustine's. Very briefly, the argument centered around the act of the human will in salvation. Pelagius believed that humans were capable of seeking God in their fallen state. Augustine taught total depravity, meaning that it is not possible for humans to seek God of their own will.

The issue made theological waves again in the 16th century when John Calvin and a former student, Jacob Arminius, became embroiled in it. Their names are most frequently associated with the debate today as Calvinism v. Arminianism. Arminius resurfaced most of Pelagius' argument with the modification that the human will was aided in seeking God by something that has come to be called "prevenient grace." In other words, humans are totally depraved, but everyone has the benefit of God's grace to come to salvation, not only those chosen by God before time.

An important corollary of this issue is referred to theologically as perseverance. Calvinists believe that people chosen by God for salvation are eternally secure in that state. Arminians teach that because humans play a part in their salvation, it is possible for them choose to reject salvation after having embraced it. The sovereignty of God is also understood differently by the two camps: Calvinists believe that God is totally sovereign in all his purposes and has ordained all that is and all that will be. Arminians believe that God's sovereignty is limited somewhat by the will of humans, but that his purposes are secured by his foreknowledge of what every human will do in every situation.

Each position has certain key Scriptures which are quoted as support. Likewise, there are Bible passages which vex each side, creating difficulties in maintaining a consistent interpretative position. One of the most sensitive sticking points is the Calvinist doctrine of election. I am going to treat two of the most frequently disputed passages as a demonstration of how the sides differ. I Timothy 2:1-4 has Paul exhorting prayers for all men because this is pleasing to God, "who desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth." Arminians think this proves that all humans may potentially be saved, not just the ones chosen by God as the Calvinists assert. Calvinists believe this presents God's loving heart toward his creation but not an aspect of his divine will.

The second passage often quoted by Arminians as closing the case against divine election is 2 Peter 3:9. Peter says that God is, "not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." Like the passage in Timothy, this one suggests to Arminians that God doesn't want any human to go to hell, therefore implying that he makes salvation available to all. The Calvinist sees this verse as parallel to the one in Timothy. The Greek word "willing" is different in this passage from the word "desires" in Timothy, although they both carry the same connotation. Here in Peter, it would be easily translated "wishing."

In both passages the Arminians try to make God's attitude an action. But if God willed all men to be saved, they would in fact all be saved because God's will is omnipotent: nothing can resist the express will of God; it will be done. The statement that God desires something does not equate with its being a fact. Again, even if God wishes none would have to suffer punishment in hell, he nonetheless knows that hell will not be empty. Unless one chooses to side with the likes of Rob Bell and eliminate hell from the equation, one cannot avoid the sad fact that some humans are going to end up there. God may wish that it were otherwise, but he knows the future; he knows hell will be populated.

One imagines that when God created the earth and set Adam and Eve in the Garden, he "wished" that they would remain obediently dependent on him. He doubtless "desired" that they would not eat of the forbidden fruit. Yet the Bible clearly teaches that God's plan always included a Redeemer; the plan predates creation; he knew Adam and Eve would fall. The answer to why he did this is in Ephesians third chapter. Paul tells the Ephesians that God's mysterious plan is now revealed: he wants the angels in heaven to see how much he loves even fallen creatures. Man had to fall so that God could demonstrate his love in a most dramatic way.

The reason Arminian teaching is attractive, in my opinion, is because it takes back from God a small amount of control. The Calvinist sees God as the Sovereign of the universe and humans as subject to his irresistible divine will. In the Garden, the Serpent asked Eve, "Has God said..." He then challenged her to take some initiative and write her own rules. She did; Adam joined her, and we suffer the consequences. Yet even believers long for a degree of control over their lives; it is still difficult for some people to let go and let God.

I was raised Arminian; I "converted" to Calvinism after years of study and personal anguish. I have become quite comfortable letting God be God. This position does not make me a puppet as some may suggest. My finite little mind behaves practically as if it were totally free: I have free will as far as I can tell. When presented with options, I must choose black or white, salt or pepper. It matters not one whit that God has preordained my choice; it is still a real choice to me.

I had breakfast with a man last week who was raised Calvinist but has come to an Arminian view. I commented on the irony of our having passed one another in our theological journey going opposite directions. I look forward to the day when in heaven we can both approach John Calvin and Jacob Arminius and have a good laugh about the sign over the gate. On the outside it says, "Whosoever will may come," while on the inside it says, "Only the elect may enter." We'll all sit down over Dutch crullers and coffee and spend a thousand years pondering how that works.

Tsunami Warning

Beware: a massive regulatory wave approaches.

Elections have consequences; that is what the winners keep reminding us. Today we learned one of the consequences of the last two elections. The Obama administration has proposed nearly 6,000 new regulations in the last ninety days. In other words, since last August, when the reelection of President Obama was beginning to look chancy, his executive powers started working in overdrive. The regulations were put in a holding pattern until Obama's reelection was assured. Once Obama won, the tsunami of regulations was released (see Breitbart.com.)

Not only is this a direct contradiction to the candidate's promise to decrease business-stifling regulation, it turns out the President has also reneged on his claim that his administration would be open for public examination. The executive has also shortened the mandatory public comment window on proposed regulations from sixty to forty-five days. Since many of the new regs run into thousands of pages each, the likelihood of any real examination in that time is small. Foreshortening the comment period also contradicts Obama's previous call in an executive order released on January 18, 2011, for, "comment periods to last for at least 60 days." This must be another of the changes Obama was talking about in the 2008 campaign.

According to FactCheck.org, it is normal for Presidents to increase the pace of their executive creations in the final years of their term in office; it is called the Cinderella Effect. When the clock is about to strike the midnight of their power, they rush to make the most of their last minutes. What Obama has done is far in excess of any of  his predecessors, however. According to Town Hall, Obama averaged over 17,000 new regulations in each of his first two years. This number outstrips all previous administrations. Although his administration's 2012 rate of regulations is down, the number will explode when the 6,000 new rules he has held back hit the pipeline.

Besides all this, according to Senator Jim Inhofe, President Obama has failed to follow the rules regarding his regulatory agenda. Inhofe charges that the Obama administration has failed, "to comply with the law by refusing to publish its regulatory agenda." The purpose of providing such an agenda is to allow the effected parties enough time to practice due diligence and provide meaningful commentary during the public comment period. By refusing to publish the agenda and shortening the comment period, Obama has effectively shut off any real evaluation of his new proposals.

Back in 1773  the cry was "no taxation without representation." The new Tea Party should be chanting, "no regulation without representation." President Obama is achieving by fiat what he cannot by due legislative process. In his first two years, he had both houses of Congress, so they were able to ram Obamacare down our throats by legislative force. Since 2010 when the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives, the tactic has been to use the power of the judiciary and executive, even at the expense of violating standard rules and practices.

Barak Obama is as President what he was back in his Chicago days: an arrogant, unprincipled ideologue. He believes he knows what is best for America, and he intends to make it happen any way he can. He appears not to mind bending the rules to the breaking point if it suits his purpose. Sadly, there are plenty of people in this country who have no more respect for rules than he does, so they applaud his bold style.

The Bible says that in the last days things will get worse and worse before the end comes. It predicts that men will behave badly and be proud of it. When I see the shameless depravity of our politicians, or think of the debauchery that is standard fare for Hollywood and television, or witness the audacity of the LGBT movement with their claims of legitimacy, or recoil at the flagrant violation of all that is fiscally responsible in Washington D.C.,  or mourn the millions of unborn children slaughtered since Roe v. Wade, I can't imagine a more striking fulfillment of those Bible words. Scripture also says there will be some in the last days who will remain righteous and "be mighty and do exploits." It's beginning to look like people just doing right will be the mighty exploit. The only exploit common in Washington these days seems to be those exploiting their public trust.

Christianity: Religion or Philosophy

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly has been a good soldier in the culture wars in recent years. In 2006 he even put out a best seller called Culture Warrior. He describes the opposing forces as, "those who embrace traditional values and those who want to change America into a 'secular-progressive' country." He makes it clear in his writing and on his television program that by "traditional values" he means the Judeo-Christian foundation on which this country was built.

O'Reilly's latest battle in the war is not going to be helpful in the long run, however. O'Reilly has been insisting recently that Christianity is a philosophy, not a religion. This position violates the "no-spin" pledge O'Reilly is so proud of. In an article in Real Clear Religion, Jeffrey Weiss makes my argument better than I could. (I highly recommend this article.) Trying to redefine a word so that it means what you want it to mean is Humpty-Dumpty's trick. It is not sound reasoning. I agree with Weiss that O'Reilly has done just this.

There are two reasons why this is an unfortunate move by O'Reilly. First it is unsustainable as a debate point. This is another way of saying he is wrong. There is such a thing as Christian philosophy, as Weiss points out. However, Christian philosophy is founded on Christian religious beliefs. The philosophy is an outgrowth of the religion, not the other way around as O'Reilly is trying to arrange. If someone came from another planet and stumbled upon the tenets of Christianity, it would be obvious that they are religious tenets. Weiss makes this point also.

The second reason O'Reilly's position is troublesome is that it becomes a classical slippery slope: if Christianity is merely a philosophy as he asserts, and if the Constitution forbids establishment only of religions, then the government could establish Christianity as a philosophy. While this may sound attractive to believers at first glance, it becomes less so upon further thought. This freedom to establish philosophy would then extend to atheism, pragmatism, nihilism, or any other dreadful "-ism" that might hold popular sway in a given Congress. This is precisely what the First Amendment prohibition against establishment was intended to thwart.

This does not mean that our government runs without philosophical underpinnings. Quite the contrary. No structure in human society is void of philosophy. The word "philosophy" simply describes how one views the world. It might be thought of as a lens through which one sees surrounding circumstances and behaviors. O'Reilly is correct to assert that our founding fathers held a decidedly Christian world-view and crafted a Constitutional government that would uphold and propagate that view.

Our real problem today is that a competing philosophy has grown so influential in society, particularly in government circles, that the Christian world-view no longer holds a clear majority. Our national elections which hover around a fifty-fifty split demonstrate this fact. True, there is not a bright line dividing Christianity into one political party or the other, although on the social issues, conservative Christians certainly lean more towards Republican platforms than Democrat. The battle we are fighting today in the public square is over Constitutional interpretation: will we maintain the perspective of the founders, or will we take a more dynamic approach and recast the principles upon which we govern.

We will continue to hold elections to decide the Constitutional issue, but I wonder if O'Reilly hasn't stumbled on a good argument in spite of his faulty application. Christianity as a philosophy is precisely what the Bible calls for: believers are supposed to view the world through God's eyes. "Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things." Even though seventy-five percent of Americans polled recently self-identified as Christians, other poll numbers and daily headlines suggest that far fewer of us actually live as though God had anything to do with our lives. George Barna found that only four percent of believers say they base their decisions on a biblical world-view.

These numbers tell me the church is failing in its primary task. The Great Commission was to make disciples; disciples are followers of their leader; our Leader modeled a radical new way to view the world. Apparently only four Christians in one hundred even try to operate with that world-view. Maybe O'Reilly is onto something. Maybe we should put more stress on the "philosophical" aspect of Christianity and less on the "religious." Maybe we are simply inoculating people with a weakened form of Christianity instead of infecting them with the powerful real  thing. (See Jeff Musgrave.)

Here is a new cause: let's forget about all this "1%" nonsense. After all, what profit is there in gaining the world and losing the soul. Let's start working on the 96% of our fellow-believers who have missed out on real Christianity. For that matter, let's make sure we are in the 4% who do get it. Let's agree with Bill O'Reilly: Christianity is a philosophy in the truest sense of the word. And it just happens to be founded on the religion that rests upon the true Word.

Toasting Christmas

Here's to wassail and figgy puddings!

It's Christmas morning and I woke up long before the sunrise. This is not unusual on December 25, although in recent years the empty nest has removed the reason to be up so early. Like most children, when I was young, I couldn't wait for this morning so I could tear into the presents waiting under the tree. After I married and my own children came along, I was as excited as they were to see the gifts distributed. I came to understand the almost embarrassed look on my Dad's face in all those home movies when he was given a gift to open. My real joy was in watching others get their presents.

 

That partially explains why during what I now call the fiscal dark ages I used credit with abandon to buy Christmas gifts for my family. Every year in January I swore I would never again charge "Christmas" and pay for eleven months after. Every year in December I broke my word and rang up the charges again. I don't mean to imply that all my borrowing was for the benefit of others; I spent plenty of money on myself in the form of cars, motorcycles, boats, and other toys. But somehow, I was able to excuse my annual December excess by calling it generosity.

Now that exigency has forcefully removed the temptation of a plastic Christmas celebration, I still overspend; at least it doesn't haunt me throughout the next year in monthly billing statements. True, the January light bill may get paid a little late, and there will be no emergency savings for some time, but I feel much better knowing it was a cash Christmas. I don't have great wealth to distribute, but I enjoy sharing what I can at this season.

But I wonder if I don't still have a serious problem with the focus of my excitement. I wonder if I haven't bought into the great commercial hype we have succumbed to in this society. Saying Christmas is about giving sounds noble, even spiritual, but that does not really reflect the reason for the season. It may be unselfish to give to others, but if I give because it makes me feel good, I have admitted a grain of selfishness in my motivation. Worse, if I overspend so that I can give "generously," pride may have slipped into the package as well.

As the sun lights the Christmas morning sky, I am forced to ask what Christmas really means to me. I am sitting in front of a beautifully decorated (fake) evergreen with a substantial pile of gaily wrapped presents lying underneath it. The yule log blazes with digital perfection on my flat screen while Christmas music pumps out of my surround sound system. No less than fourteen Santas sit in various poses around the living area, and scores more artifacts of the holiday grace every flat surface available.

Sadly, it sounds trite to say what I am about to say: Jesus is the reason for the season. I know this somewhere deep inside, but my outward expression (and my wife's decorating obsession) belie the truth of it. Granted, there is one manger scene among the red and green collection of holiday images, but the preponderance of everything else the season has become outweighs any spiritual significance of the little creche. The preparations and resulting activities also shout louder than the message of the manger.

It will not be popular to say so, but the reason we celebrate the coming of Jesus is because of what he was destined to do for us. Thanks to our forefather, Adam, we are all born separated from our Creator by a distance that no man can cross. But years after the manger, a cross did span the distance between God and his fallen creatures, and the sweet little baby in the straw became the suffering man on that cross. The sin that caused the separation from God and dissolution of all peace on earth demanded a payment. That is what the coming of a Savior is all about.

Now if I can somehow relate the giving of those pretty presents under my Christmas tree with the gift God gave on Calvary's tree, I may have rediscovered the reason for the season. I don't want to be a humbug. I don't see anything wrong with getting families together to exchange gifts and share a special meal, but I can no longer equate what we have made Christmas into with what happened in Judea back when the time had fully come and God sent forth his son as a love gift so that whoever believes on him will not perish but have eternal life. If you must raise your eggnog, toast that.

Twelve Twelve Twelve

At 12:12 on 12/12/12 it was only 12 days until Christmas. I slept through it.

Having missed the moment, I have been meditating all day about what to write on this momentous date, 12/12/12. It should be something really stupendous, tremendous or at least significant. Just about every metaphysical system ever dreamed up has a special place for the number 12. Twelve months in a year, twelve signs in the zodiac, twelve hours on the clock (unless you are military,) twelve peers on a jury, twelve days of Christmas, and did I mention that 12 is a dozen which is a typical number of donuts, certainly a metaphysical alignment if I ever heard one.

If you read the Bible closely, the number 12 comes up more than two dozen times. In Judaism it is the number of completeness. It appears throughout Scripture: twelve tribes, twelve apostles, twelve miles each way for the new Jerusalem. It is not recorded, but I would wager that the Garden was twelve square something. I have no doubt that God in his wisdom has built meaning into everything he has done; it often escapes us, but it is there whether we recognize it or not.

However, it is the height of hubris to think that a date on the Gregorian calendar would necessarily have universal symbolic meaning. The calendar we use today was not adopted until 1582 A.D. (or CE if you prefer.) While it is true that most of the civilized world has adopted this method of tracking time, it is by no means the oldest. There are several calendars far older. The date today on a Mayan calendar might be 8/11/3114. The Chinese would have us believe it is 10/29/4710. The Jewish date is 9/28/5773, measuring (as they believe) to the time of creation.

My point is that it is just like us egotistical Westerners to think that the entire universe revolves around us and our calendar. This same kind of thinking led dark ages clerics to burn at the stake heretics who suggested that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Oops! The heretics were right. Barely one generation before our enlightened forefathers settled on a calendar, their grandparents were scoffing at the plans of one Columbus of Genoa who thought he could sail west around the world and reach the east. I admit he miscalculated the distance, but he had the concept right. Thank goodness Ferdinand and Isabella were willing to finance his efforts.

As this momentous day nears its end, I think it is wonderful that thousands of couples were able to book their weddings today; it will be hard for those guys to forget the date of their anniversary (or not.) Hundreds of happy parents are gushing over their newborns who will forever carry 12/12/12 on their birth certificates. In addition, I am certain that many people will have had meaningful things happen today, and they will record 12/12/12 as one of the best or worst days of their lives. Beyond that, I suspect that most people will record absolutely nothing today.

That is a shame. Not only is today the first day of the rest of your life, today is the last day of all the days that have gone before. More importantly, today is the only day you have to live. Instead of looking for significance in astrology, numerology, cosmology or any-ology, you should be looking for the best way to use the moment you are in right now. Maybe it is nine days to the end of the world as Mayan speculators predict (12/21/12.) More important, for more than 150,000 people, today was the end of their world, or I should say their life on earth.

So there it is: it does not matter what today's date is. What matters is what your next address is. Every body ends up in a six foot box in a six foot hole, but every soul lives on through eternity. The most important date in my life was 4/21/63; that's when I sealed the deal on my eternal destiny. Although there is a metaphysical sense in which I have been seated with Jesus in heaven ever since that day, practically speaking, whatever the date on whatever calendar I use I am called to live each day I get on earth as if heaven matters most. I believe it truly does.

Living with Infamy

"I do not believe in using women in combat because women are too fierce." Margaret Mead

Back on December 7, the day that FDR said would live in infamy, I saw a story that should also live there, but it probably won’t, given the slouch toward Gommorah we are rapidly assuming. Blake Page, a West Point cadet, announced his resignation only five months before he would have graduated. There is so much about this story that is ironic, not least of which is the timing, but maybe he gave no thought to its relationship to Pearl Harbor and everything it stands for.

I marveled slightly at the fact that he couldn’t wait another few months after what he describes as an untenable situation he bore up under for years. He claims that he has suffered grievous discrimination due to his sexual preference – one guess as to what that is. He claims that he and his fellow homosexuals are regularly subjected to hazing, bullying, loss of privileges and denied advancement into the select few that make up the top tier of the Academy. Because Obama rescinded don’t-ask-don’t-tell, the cadet was able to openly lead a gay organization on campus. But apparently this wasn’t enough to keep him there for one more semester. He claims he has been suffering with depression over what to do about his cause.

The cadet claims that the discrimination came predominately from what he called “evangelical” Christians in the Academy. He felt that his First Amendment rights to freedom from religion (sic) were being violated. I wonder if some brand of religion shouldn’t be required of all West Point graduates as sine qua non of their preparedness. It is as W. T. Cummings has said, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” This being the case, an atheist leader would be unprepared for the experience of warfare; he would be unprepared to lead his men (and women) into battle.

This story parallels one from a couple weeks ago about female military personnel suing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta because they are not allowed to claim combat experience. They say it restricts their ability to qualify for the higher ranks because combat experience weighs heavily in the process of advancement. They claim that their current assignments, although different from their male peers, still involve them in combat situations, so the distinction is, in their estimation, unconstitutional.

In both of these stories, whether the protagonists are gay, atheist, or female, we have "jumped the shark" in the debate. The military is by nature a very specialized institution. While it is a necessary part of maintaining a civil society, it is nonetheless an atypical environment. While our society may wish for gays, atheists and females to have totally unrestricted access to all other aspects of modern life, there must be an exception carved out for military training and service.

The place of the military establishment in society is purposely on the fringe. As long as there are people in the world who want to kill us and break our things, we need a matching force willing to do likewise. However, I do not think this force must mirror the rest of society; in fact, I hope it does not. I want our military to be trained, practiced experts in doing things in the war zone that would be unthinkable in a school zone, hospital zone, a residential zone or any other zone not embroiled in battle. To do these atypical things requires atypical skills and relationships.

Our society wants to act like men and women are alike in every way except for some obvious biological differences. Society wants to ignore the fact that the biological differences are merely the physical evidence of fundamental ontological differences. Man was created a different being than woman with different responsibilities and different processing equipment (if you will.) Men are from Mars (the god of war) and women are from Venus (the goddess of love.)

Because of the inherent differences between men and women, they relate to one another and to the opposite sex differently. Plug these different styles into a battle scene and problems develop immediately. One obvious issue involves the risk of capture; men don't have to worry about being raped if they are captured; women certainly do. A battlefield commander would be reluctant (or should be) to send women into front line situations where capture is likely. Men in battle will by nature think differently about their comrades-in-arms if they are female. I believe this means that even if women were given the same assignments as men, there would be a de facto differentiation in their front line deployment.

The reason I have been discussing women in battle after starting with Cadet Page's homosexual complaint is because gays serving openly in the military present many of the same issues. The LGBT lobby's argument is that certain people are born in the wrong body; they claim some people are women in men's bodies and vice versa. It follows logically that these women-in-men's-bodies would present the same difficulties as women in women's bodies. The same awkwardness in relationships would surface making the prosecution of war more difficult than it already is.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly have been warning about the feminization of our culture. It is interesting that no one seems to be calling for the masculinization of women. Perhaps it is worth asking why that is the case. If true egalitarianism were the driving force, it would be logical for those interested to be advocating for women to become more like men as men are asked to become more like women. This is clearly not the case.

I believe this is true in part because of a strong undercurrent in modern progressive thinking that the traditional patriarchal structure of society is inferior to a matriarchal one. Witness the rise of the goddess movement, Gaia and Wiccan religion, all oriented around feminine power. Even popular literature like Dan Brown's novels pervert religious history by suggesting that the true scion of Jesus was a woman. The Prince of Darkness hates the Father of Light and will do anything to diminish his image in humans.

Lest I be misunderstood, I believe the imageo dei (image of God) is both masculine and feminine; this is why (in my humble opinion) he had to create both male and female: neither would alone be sufficient to reflect the totality of who he is. Because of this I believe we should celebrate gender differences instead of trying to ignore them. I also believe this is why God is so repulsed by homosexuality: this perversion shatters the imagery of his perfect creation. And, with all due respect to the ladies, I think the battlefield is no place for women or for men who think they are women.

No Grown-ups in DC

I have not posted in a while. This is partly due to the fact that I have been writing an essay that was due this week. (Yes, students, teachers are given assignments too.) There were more than a few times in recent weeks when a subject had my fingers itching, but I was so nearly burned out after the election cycle that I forced myself to stay on the bench. I submitted my rough draft yesterday (on time) and I can hold out no longer.

One wants to ask whether there is even one grown-up left in Washington D.C. The most obvious example of our elected officials acting like small children is the so-called fiscal cliff situation. I am not an economist and I don't play one on TV (parody Robert Young,) but it is plain to any thinking adult that no entity, not governmental nor commercial nor domestic, can continue to spend more than it takes in and remain functional. The word "fiscal" softens the real impact of the "cliff" we are approaching.

Fiscal means having to do with money. Money is what makes the world go 'round. A cliff is a sudden drop-off where ostensibly one loses one's footing, perhaps falling out of control into some depth of disaster. The "fiscal cliff" is, therefore, a looming economic disaster. Listening to the Republicans and Democrats take shots at each other you would think the only disaster they have in view is the reduction of their political power.

If a true disaster were pending and the pols would admit it, they would look like they did on September 12, 2001. The mutuality and cooperation on that day seem like something out of a fairy tale in light of the shenanigans in D.C. today. I try to imagine what it would have been like if both parties had seen the airliners coming at the buildings on 9/11. Would the elephants have bellowed at the donkeys that their policies had reduced the covert operations of our government to such a paucity that we could not foresee the attack? Would the donkeys bray at the elephants that the attack would not be pending if Bush had not invaded Iraq? Would they continue slinging slurs until the planes smashed into their targets?

Although the question seems ridiculous, we are witnessing exactly the same scenario if the economic situation is as dire as they propose. In fact, the analogy can be extended: we had seen a precursor to 9/11 a few years prior when attempts were made to topple the towers in 1991 and 1993. Attacks on embassies and the USS Cole should have continued to sound the alarm. The market crash of October of 2008 is the parallel to the 1991 bombing. The housing crisis and subsequent multiple bail-outs are also directly analogous. Yet the children in Washington continue to act as if there are not fiscal planes heading for our financial towers.

The present posturing of the political classes makes one wonder which side of their mouths to listen to. If their shared warning concerning the frightful consequences of going over the cliff are true, then their behavior vis a vis the necessary compromise with their adversaries is worse than childish: it is mutually diabolical. On the other hand, if one party is correctly assessing the situation and the other party is to blame for blocking sincere efforts to find a solution, then the party guilty of blocking is alone contemptible if not traitorous. I suspect the truth may lie somewhere in the middle.

More and more one hears commentators suggesting that the best solution to our current crisis is to do nothing and let the cliff do its work. A businessman who is good friend of mine suggested after Obama was elected in 2008 that the only way people would realize their mistake would be for his policies to drive our nation to its knees. We may be there now: on our knees with a fiscal gun to the back or our head and no way to keep the hit man from pulling the trigger.

The image of being on our knees is doubly appropriate. Financially and politically we have been forced to our knees and an execution seems immanent. But being on our knees also suggests a posture of spiritual and emotional destitution, a place from which there is no recourse but to turn to God in prayer. That too smacks of September 12, 2001. It is sad but true that only destitution seems capable of driving us arrogant, up by the bootstraps Americans to a place of need. Choose your analogy: "Jesus Take the Wheel" as Carrie Underwood sang a few years back, or, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit," as Jesus said at his execution. Either implies that childlike faith Jesus commended. If only our representatives would start acting childlike instead of childish.