Peach Pear Breakfast Devotional
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Ready for the Knock on Your Door
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Most of us have answered a knock on our door, only to discover a smiling, well-dressed couple—Watchtower publication in hand—standing on the other side, waiting to talk with us about the gospel according to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I used to dread these encounters. In fact, while they were introducing themselves, I’d be frantically thinking up excuses to get them off of my porch and out of my life.
I came to realize, though, that I avoided these conversations because I was not equipped to engage the Witnesses in a thoughtful way. They seemed to know their stuff. I didn’t. They trained for hours prior to our conversation. I hadn’t trained at all. I only knew what I believed. I had no idea why I believed it.
For instance, I’d try to make the case that Jesus is God (a doctrine they reject), yet had few good reasons to offer them to support my belief. To make matters worse, they had quick responses to my points they could recite at will. As a result, I’d leave the discussion feeling bested by the couple at my door and unsure about my own convictions. Many Christians have had the same experience, maybe even you.
Those awkward encounters are a thing of the past, though, because I have since learned some things that tip the scales in my favor, and I want to pass those ideas on to you so you don’t have to run for cover the next time Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on your door.
I want to give you some tools to help you make the greatest impact possible in your conservations with Jehovah’s Witnesses. To simplify the process, we’ll focus on a single issue, on one vital question: Who is Jesus?
Quote Their Bible, Not Yours
To start with, I want you to make a strategic move that will save you a lot of trouble in your conversations. Answering the question, “Who is Jesus?,” involves using straightforward passages of Scripture to make our case. Even though the Jehovah’s Witness Bible, the New World Translation (NWT), is actually mistranslated in a number of places to support their doctrines, it can still be used by us to effectively make our points.
Have the Jehovah’s Witness open their NWT and read aloud the passages you suggest to them. There are three reasons why this strategy works so well.
First, by using the translation they trust, it completely sidesteps unhelpful disputes about what the Bible says. Second, your argument will have a greater impact since you’re using a translation they’re comfortable with. I know I’m skeptical when I read a work from a competing religious group. Jehovah’s Witnesses are no different. They’ll have their guards up if you cite your translation, but not if you use their NWT. Third, Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t likely take literature that you offer them, but they will always have their NWT with them. If you show them the real Jesus using their own book, then they’ll never be without the truth.
Only One Question
A host of issues can get you sidetracked with Jehovah’s Witnesses if you’re not careful—soul sleep, celebrating birthdays or Christmas, blood transfusions, Heaven, Hell, war, even the Holy Spirit. Don’t go there. None of these are the most important issue. The goal of your conversation is to answer only one question: Who is Jesus? How you answer this question changes everything.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the archangel Michael was the very first being in the universe created by Jehovah-God. Michael was then used by God to create the rest of the universe. Later, at the appointed time, Michael was born to the virgin Mary as a human being, thus ceasing to be an angel. Then after His spiritual resurrection, Jesus resumes His identity as Michael. That is the Jehovah’s Witness answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?” Jesus, is the archangel Michael incarnate.[1]
By contrast, Christians hold that Jesus is the eternal, second Person of the Trinity. Jesus wasn’tcreated by Jehovah-God; He is Jehovah-God. Christianity stands or falls on its view of Christ. If we can demonstrate that Jesus is Jehovah, then the high tower of the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine comes crashing down.
The salvation of anyone, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, depends on an accurate understanding of and belief in God the Son. Jesus said, “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He you will die in your sins” (Jn. 8:24).[2] Here Jesus is claiming to be the “I AM” recorded in Isa. 43. The irony is that Isa. 43 is the chapter where Jehovah’s Witnesses derive their name. Isaiah writes, “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He” (Isa. 43:10).
Jehovah says His true witnesses will believe of Him that “I am He.” Yet, Jesus says true believers must believe of Him that “I am He.” In fact, this claim, coupled with Jn. 8:58 (“…before Abraham was, I am”), was the reason the Jews tried to stone Jesus (Jn. 8:59). His point was clear: Rejecting Jesus’ deity is rejecting salvation itself. That’s why our question, “Who is Jesus?,” is the only question we should focus on.
What’s in a Name?
There are many convincing arguments for the deity of Christ in the Bible. You want to be as strategic as possible, though, when a Jehovah’s Witness is standing at your door. Our general goal is to get them thinking—to put a stone in their shoe, so to speak. We want them walking away pondering an important point we’ve made. That won’t work if we trot out standard verses for Christ’s deity like Jn. 1:1 and Jn. 20:28. Jehovah’s Witnesses have heard those verses countless times. They’ll be waiting for you with well-rehearsed responses. They’re trained to answer these challenges without even thinking.
We need a different strategy. I’m not saying to never use Jn. 1:1 or Jn. 20:28. They offer clear support for Jesus’ deity and should be used. Just don’t start with them. Make your visitors think through some other passages first, verses they probably haven’t considered and haven’t been trained to respond to.
Our basic strategy is to demonstrate that Jesus is identified as Jehovah. If we can show that Jesus is Jehovah, then the Jehovah’s Witness belief system comes crashing down. So here’s the question: Is Jesus ever identified with Jehovah?
The simple answer to this question is, yes. You may be thinking, “What is so special about Jesus being recognized as Jehovah? Well, this requires some background information. The proper name for God in the Hebrew Bible is YHWH. This divine name is called the tetragrammaton, which means “four-letters.” The tetragrammaton was so sacred to ancient Jews that the name was never written in full, or even spoken. In fact, Jews for centuries would substitute the divine name with the name Adonai. This led to confusion over exactly how the divine name should be pronounced.
Eventually, Jews began to place the vowels from Adonai (a-o-a) between the consonants YHWH. The result was Yahowah, or Jehovah. So the name Jehovah turns out to be a man-made construction, rather than a biblical term.[3]
Jesus Is Jehovah
With these preliminary issues out of the way, let’s dive into a persuasive argument showing Jesus is Jehovah. It involves two straightforward passages of Scripture, one from the New Testament, and one from the Old Testament. All you have to do is connect these passages together.
Ask your visitors to take out their NWT and turn to Ps. 102:25-27. The psalmist writes,
Long ago you laid the foundations of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you will remain.
Just like a garment they will all wear out.
Just like clothing you will replace them, and they will pass away.
But you are the same, and your years will never end. (NWT)
There are two key questions you need to ask about this passage. First, who is this text about, that is, who does the “you” in the passage refer to? Make sure you get a clear answer. If they are paying attention to the context, they’ll recognize that this text is about Jehovah. The first verse of the Psalm declares, “O Jehovah, hear my prayer. Let my cry for help reach you….” This entire Psalm is actually a short prayer to Jehovah. Indeed, David uses Jehovah’s name seven times in the Psalm. Clearly, the who in the passage is Jehovah.
Second, how is Jehovah described in this text? We are told Jehovah created the heavens and the earth (v. 25), that He does not change—Jehovah is immutable (v. 26-27)—and that Jehovah is eternal (v. 27). He is, therefore, the unique, eternal, changeless, creator God.
Once you have agreement on these points (which should not be at all controversial for the Jehovah’s Witness), kindly ask your guests to turn in their NWT to Heb. 1:10-12. Before you jump right in, though, it’s important to first establish the context. Apologist Ron Rhodes writes:
You might want to point out that the whole focus of Hebrews 1-3 is to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus Christ—including His superiority over the prophets (1:1-4), the angels (1:5-2:18), and Moses (3:1-6). How is this superiority demonstrated? Christ is shown to be God’s ultimate revelation (1:1); He is affirmed as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe (1:2-3); and He is said to have the very nature of God (1:3).[4]
In verse 5, we read, “For to which of the angels did God ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’?” The obvious answer to this hypothetical question is that God never said that toany angel. Rather, in Mark 1:11, God says to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son; with You I am well pleased.” This rules out the false doctrine taught by the Watchtower that Jesus is the archangel Michael. Heb. 1 has more to say, though, in v. 6-8:
But when he again brings his Firstborn into the inhabited earth, he says: “And let all of God’s angels do obeisance to him.” Also, he says about the angels: “He makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” But about the Son, he says: “God is your throne forever and ever, and the scepter of your Kingdom is the scepter of uprightness.” (NWT)
Clearly, these verses are speaking about the Son. It’s tempting at this juncture to point out that with other translations in verse 8 the Father says to the Son, “Your throne, O God” (ESV), instead of the NWT’s, “God is your throne.” Also, in verse 6 every modern translation says the angelsworship the Son. The NWT translates that word obeisance to preserve their anti-Trinitarian doctrine.
Never mind. Let that all go for now. Instead, look closely at the beginning of verse 8, “But about the Son, He says….” So, God is talking about the Son in verses 8 and 9. Now, still talking about the Son, the author continues in Heb. 1:10-12:
And: “At the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; and just like a garment, they will all wear out, and you will wrap them up just as a cloak, as a garment, and they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never come to an end,” (NWT)
Do you recognize these words? They are taken directly from Ps. 102:25-27. Remember that our Jehovah’s Witness friend has already agreed that the description in the Psalm is of the eternal, changeless, creator Jehovah. The “you” in the Psalm is God. Yet, the author of Hebrews, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, clearly attributes these same attributes to the Son. The “you” in Heb. 1:10-12 is Jesus. Therefore, Jesus is being identified with Jehovah. So, is Ps. 102:25-27 about Jesus, or is it about Jehovah? The answer is, yes, because Jesus is Jehovah.
Responding to Rejoinders
I’ve used this argument on Jehovah’s Witnesses and have yet to receive a reasonable response. In many instances, my guests had no answer to the argument at all. Of course, that doesn’t mean they had nothing to say. There are three basic responses you will likely hear after presenting this argument: a dodge, a downplay, or a distortion.
The first and most common response is to dodge the argument by citing other passages they think teach that Jesus is the first created being. It may be helpful at this point to narrate the discussion. Graciously point out that they have not adequately responded to your specific argument. You might want to say something like this:
I’d love to talk about the interpretation of some of these other passages with you, but before we move forward, I want to get your thoughts on the argument I’ve already presented. If you don’t have a response or need some time to think about it, I’m fine with that. But as it stands right now it looks like the author of Hebrews provides a powerful argument for Jesus being identified as Jehovah.
If your guests need more time, then give it to them. Don’t be a unpleasant and act like you’ve got them in a corner. Our aim is to get them thinking. We’re putting a stone in their shoe. When they agree to think about it, you’ve accomplished your goal. This might be a good time to schedule another visit so you can follow up on this argument.
The second response I’ve encountered is to downplay the attributes in Heb. 1 to fit the description of a created creature. But this simply will not work because the same attributes in this passage are used to describe Jehovah. Are we to believe that the infinite God of the universe is being described in the same terms as a mere creature? Ps. 102 is not the description of a created, finite, changing creature; rather, it is a description of the eternal, unchanging Creator. The only honest way to make sense of these two passages is to affirm that Jesus and Jehovah are the same.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the archangel Michael changed from an angel into a human named Jesus. Then, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, he changed back to Michael again. This is asubstantial alteration of one’s being, to say the least. This certainly is not the immutable Being described in Ps. 102 or Heb. 1. The Christian view is not vulnerable to this charge, since we teach that the Second Person of the Godhead added a human nature without altering His immutable divine nature.
Third, sometimes a Jehovah’s Witness will resort to distorting the argument. I’ve had a few take me back to Hebrews 1:8-9.
But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” (ESV)
The Jehovah’s Witness might point out that this quote from Psalm 45:6-7 is about Solomon. The author of Hebrews takes a passage about Solomon and applies it to Jesus. Does this prove, then, they ask, that Jesus is Solomon? If not, then the application of Psalm 102 to Jesus does not prove He is Jehovah.
This response, though, distorts our argument. Psalm 45 shows that, since Solomon was a type of Christ, then some things true of Solomon will also be true of Christ. Ps. 102 also teaches that some things true of Jehovah are likewise true of Christ. But that is not because Jehovah is a type of Christ. It is because Jehovah is Christ, evidenced by the unique, divine characteristics they both share—eternality, immutability, etc. That’s the point being distorted.
The approach I’ve outlined for you can have a powerful impact on your guests.[5] Don’t be surprised, though, if they don’t convert right there on your doorstep. These things take time. Plus, it’s not our job to convict or to convert, but to speak with grace and let the Holy Spirit do the rest. Only God can lift the Watchtower’s veil of darkness that obscures the truth from Jehovah’s Witnesses. Your job is to communicate the truth as clearly and persuasively as possible, then let God use His truth to set people free.
[1] Ron Rhodes, Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Jehovah’s Witness (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2009), 173-174.
[2] All Bible passages are taken from the ESV unless otherwise stated
[3] Ron Rhodes, 50-51.
[4] Ibid., 178.
[5] This same approach can be used with a number of passages from the Old testament referring to Jehovah that are applied in the New Testament to Jesus. For example: Gen. 1:1, Is. 45:18 vs. Jn. 1:1-3; Is. 45:23 vs. Phil. 2:9-11; Is. 45:21 vs. Acts 4:10-12, Jn 4:14; Is. 44:6 vs. Rev. 1:17; and many others like this.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. And, sometimes, demonic possession.
In the late 1980s, I was introduced to a self-styled Satanic high priestess. She called herself a witch and dressed the part, with flowing dark clothes and black eye shadow around to her temples. In our many discussions, she acknowledged worshipping Satan as his “queen.”
I’m a man of science and a lover of history; after studying the classics at Princeton, I trained in psychiatry at Yale and in psychoanalysis at Columbia. That background is why a Catholic priest had asked my professional opinion, which I offered pro bono, about whether this woman was suffering from a mental disorder. This was at the height of the national panic about Satanism. (In a case that helped induce the hysteria, Virginia McMartin and others had recently been charged with alleged Satanic ritual abuse at a Los Angeles preschool; the charges were later dropped.) So I was inclined to skepticism. But my subject’s behavior exceeded what I could explain with my training. She could tell some people their secret weaknesses, such as undue pride. She knew how individuals she’d never known had died, including my mother and her fatal case of ovarian cancer. Six people later vouched to me that, during her exorcisms, they heard her speaking multiple languages, including Latin, completely unfamiliar to her outside of her trances. This was not psychosis; it was what I can only describe as paranormal ability. I concluded that she was possessed. Much later, she permitted me to tell her story.
The priest who had asked for my opinion of this bizarre case was the most experienced exorcist in the country at the time, an erudite and sensible man. I had told him that, even as a practicing Catholic, I wasn’t likely to go in for a lot of hocus-pocus. “Well,” he replied, “unless we thought you were not easily fooled, we would hardly have wanted you to assist us.”
So began an unlikely partnership. For the past two-and-a-half decades and over several hundred consultations, I’ve helped clergy from multiple denominations and faiths to filter episodes of mental illness–which represent the overwhelming majority of cases–from, literally, the devil’s work. It’s an unlikely role for an academic physician, but I don’t see these two aspects of my career in conflict. The same habits that shape what I do as a professor and psychiatrist–open-mindedness, respect for evidence and compassion for suffering people–led me to aid in the work of discerning attacks by what I believe are evil spirits and, just as critically, differentiating these extremely rare events from medical conditions.
Is it possible to be a sophisticated psychiatrist and believe that evil spirits are, however seldom, assailing humans? Most of my scientific colleagues and friends say no, because of their frequent contact with patients who are deluded about demons, their general skepticism of the supernatural, and their commitment to employ only standard, peer-reviewed treatments that do not potentially mislead (a definite risk) or harm vulnerable patients. But careful observation of the evidence presented to me in my career has led me to believe that certain extremely uncommon cases can be explained no other way.
The Vatican does not track global or countrywide exorcism, but in my experience and according to the priests I meet, demand is rising. The United States is home to about 50 “stable” exorcists–those who have been designated by bishops to combat demonic activity on a semi-regular basis–up from just 12 a decade ago, according to the Rev. Vincent Lampert, an Indianapolis-based priest-exorcist who is active in the International Association of Exorcists. (He receives about 20 inquiries per week, double the number from when his bishop appointed him in 2005.) The Catholic Church has responded by offering greater resources for clergy members who wish to address the problem. In 2010, for instance, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops organized a meeting in Baltimore for interested clergy. In 2014, Pope Francis formally recognized the IAE, 400 members of which are to convene in Rome this October. Members believe in such strange cases because they are constantly called upon to help. (I served for a time as a scientific adviser on the group’s governing board.)
Unfortunately, not all clergy involved in this complex field are as cautious as the priest who first approached me. In some circles, there is a tendency to become overly preoccupied with putative demonic explanations and to see the devil everywhere. Fundamentalist misdiagnoses and absurd or even dangerous “treatments,” such as beating victims, have sometimes occurred, especially in developing countries. This is perhaps why exorcism has a negative connotation in some quarters. People with psychological problems should receive psychological treatment.
But I believe I’ve seen the real thing. Assaults upon individuals are classified either as “demonic possessions” or as the slightly more common but less intense attacks usually called “oppressions.” A possessed individual may suddenly, in a type of trance, voice statements of astonishing venom and contempt for religion, while understanding and speaking various foreign languages previously unknown to them. The subject might also exhibit enormous strength or even the extraordinarily rare phenomenon of levitation. (I have not witnessed a levitation myself, but half a dozen people I work with vow that they’ve seen it in the course of their exorcisms.) He or she might demonstrate “hidden knowledge” of all sorts of things–like how a stranger’s loved ones died, what secret sins she has committed, even where people are at a given moment. These are skills that cannot be explained except by special psychic or preternatural ability.
I have personally encountered these rationally inexplicable features, along with other paranormal phenomena. My vantage is unusual: As a consulting doctor, I think I have seen more cases of possession than any other physician in the world.
Most of the people I evaluate in this role suffer from the more prosaic problems of a medical disorder. Anyone even faintly familiar with mental illnesses knows that individuals who think they are being attacked by malign spirits are generally experiencing nothing of the sort. Practitioners see psychotic patients all the time who claim to see or hear demons; histrionic or highly suggestible individuals, such as those suffering from dissociative identity syndromes; and patients with personality disorders who are prone to misinterpret destructive feelings, in what exorcists sometimes call a “pseudo-possession,” via the defense mechanism of an externalizing projection. But what am I supposed to make of patients who unexpectedly start speaking perfect Latin?
I approach each situation with an initial skepticism. I technically do not make my own “diagnosis” of possession but inform the clergy that the symptoms in question have no conceivable medical cause.
I am aware of the way many psychiatrists view this sort of work. While the American Psychiatric Association has no official opinion on these affairs, the field (like society at large) is full of unpersuadable skeptics and occasionally doctrinaire materialists who are often oddly vitriolic in their opposition to all things spiritual. My job is to assist people seeking help, not to convince doctors who are not subject to suasion. Yet I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners nowadays who are open to entertaining such hypotheses. Many believe exactly what I do, though they may be reluctant to speak out.
As a man of reason, I’ve had to rationalize the seemingly irrational. Questions about how a scientifically trained physician can believe “such outdated and unscientific nonsense,” as I’ve been asked, have a simple answer. I honestly weigh the evidence. I have been told simplistically that levitation defies the laws of gravity, and, well, of course it does! We are not dealing here with purely material reality, but with the spiritual realm. One cannot force these creatures to undergo lab studies or submit to scientific manipulation; they will also hardly allow themselves to be easily recorded by video equipment, as skeptics sometimes demand. (The official Catholic Catechism holds that demons are sentient and possess their own wills; as they are fallen angels, they are also craftier than humans. That’s how they sow confusion and seed doubt, after all.) Nor does the church wish to compromise a sufferer’s privacy, any more than doctors want to compromise a patient’s confidentiality.
Ignorance and superstition have often surrounded stories of demonic possession in various cultures, and surely many alleged episodes can be explained by fraud, chicanery or mental pathology. But anthropologists agree that nearly all cultures have believed in spirits, and the vast majority of societies (including our own) have recorded dramatic stories of spirit possession. Despite varying interpretations, multiple depictions of the same phenomena in astonishingly consistent ways offer cumulative evidence of their credibility.
As a psychoanalyst, a blanket rejection of the possibility of demonic attacks seems less logical, and often wishful in nature, than a careful appraisal of the facts. As I see it, the evidence for possession is like the evidence for George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware. In both cases, written historical accounts with numerous sound witnesses testify to their accuracy.
In the end, however, it was not an academic or dogmatic view that propelled me into this line of work. I was asked to consult about people in pain. I have always thought that, if requested to help a tortured person, a physician should not arbitrarily refuse to get involved. Those who dismiss these cases unwittingly prevent patients from receiving the help they desperately require, either by failing to recommend them for psychiatric treatment (which most clearly need) or by not informing their spiritual ministers that something beyond a mental or other illness seems to be the issue. For any person of science or faith, it should be impossible to turn one’s back on a tormented soul.
Richard Gallagher is a board-certified psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College. He is at work on a book about demonic possession in the United States.
I’m glad to be an American. But I won’t really celebrate the Fourth of July.
This weekend we celebrate the Fourth of July, high holiday of American civic religion and universal occasion for cookouts, stars-and-stripes bikinis, and raucous displays of unbridled patriotism.
More than 200 years ago, however, there was no such unanimity on the subject of the American Revolution. Though our popular history tends to avoid such off-message details, about 15 percent of white American colonists during the Revolutionary War were loyalists, and perhaps more surprisingly, close to half were effectively neutral.
Prominent among the neutral colonists were pacifist Christians–mostly Quakers and various types of German Anabaptists and Baptists–who declined to fight on theological grounds. Though they were typically not loyal to England, these churches refused to join the Revolution, rejecting violent conflict even when waged in the name of liberty.
“[W]e have dedicated ourselves to Serve all Men in every Thing that can be helpful to the Preservation of Men’s lives, but we find no Freedom in giving, or doing, or assisting in any Thing by which Men’s lives are destroyed or hurt,” declared a group of Mennonite elders and teachers in November of 1775, in a letter thanking the Pennsylvania Assembly for exempting them from conscription if they paid a fine or found a willing substitute.
Likely aware of the persecution–including imprisonment, confiscation of property, and rough treatment–that would await some of their number as war fervor swelled in the coming months, the elders added, “We beg the Patience of all those who believe we err in this Point.”
Though the colonial governments generally urged tolerance towards the pacifist churches, Tories and Patriots alike were suspicious of those who would neither fight nor swear loyalty to one cause or the other. When incarceration was not forthcoming, mob attack too often arrived instead.
Ironically, given the revolutionaries’ numerous tax-focused grievances, the Quakers were a particular target of mistrust because they would not pay taxes to support the war effort. (“No taxation without representation, except you definitely have to pay taxes to fund our militias whether you want this war or not” would have made a less catchy slogan, I guess.)
The pacifist perspective on the Revolution goes all but unheard today, as patriotic hymns are queued up for this Sunday’s service. Indeed, for many American Christians, the rightness of the Revolution–a conflict between two majority Christian armies that, in the general way of war, valued wealth and power above love and unity–goes without question. With President John Quincy Adams, much of the modern American church affirms in deed if not in word that, after Christmas, Independence Day is our “most joyous and most venerated festival,” a day to celebrate what is perceived as a major accomplishment in God’s plan for the world.
The trouble is that the pacifist churches were right. As theologian Greg Boyd has asked, “How can a holiday that celebrates one group of mostly professing Christians violently overthrowing another group of mostly professing Christians be venerated by people who are called to love their enemies and to be peacemakers, even if they happen to find themselves on the side that won?”
That’s not to say that I wish we were British or even that I won’t watch any fireworks. America is my home. I’m thankful to live in a nation that from the start has placed a historically high value on freedom and individual rights, and I, too, object to taxation without representation. As a libertarian, my views on the appropriate role of government are almost certainly closer than average to the classical liberalism of the Founding Fathers that Independence Day commemorates.
But it is to say that I can’t celebrate, even indirectly, the unknown tens of thousands of deaths that were the price of independence. In this I am following in the footsteps–admittedly with far less personal risk–of the Quakers and Anabaptists who refused to cause those same casualties.
It isn’t that I dislike America, but that its claims on my allegiance are a very distant second to the claims of a different sort of Kingdom altogether. For the Kingdom which Jesus came to establish is fundamentally not of this world. It is marked by peace among people of all nationalities, and a freedom guaranteed not by declaration and war but by the work of Christ. America has a lot of good points, to be sure, but it is not identical to and cannot compete with the Kingdom of God.
And the Fourth of July, inspired by the soaring (if unequally applied) rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, may rank pretty highly as political holidays go, but there is nothing particularly Christian about it. Certainly Christians can enjoy fireworks with our friends this weekend, but we would do well to view the whole affair through “Kingdom lenses,” recalling that these sparklers burn in celebration of a “Thing by which Men’s lives [were] destroyed.”
Can Hillary Clinton overcome her trust problem?
By Anne Gearan, Washington Post, July 3, 2016:
Hillary Clinton’s weekend interview with the FBI stands as a perfect symbol of what is probably her biggest liability heading into the fall election: A lot of people say they don’t trust her.
Clinton sat for an interview of more than three hours as part of a Justice Department investigation into the privately owned email system she operated off the books when she was secretary of state. The timing–less than three weeks before she will claim the Democratic presidential nomination–is an attempt to make the best of a situation that would look bad for any candidate but is particularly damaging for Clinton.
That the interview at FBI headquarters was voluntary does not expunge the whiff of suspicion surrounding the entire email affair that, for many voters, confirms a long-held view that Clinton shades the truth or plays by her own rules.
In opinion polls and focus groups, even many people who say they plan to vote for Clinton say they think she has lied or has something to hide. Her poor marks for trustworthiness have much to do with her long and sometimes messy public life, and very little to do with Republican opponent Donald Trump. Both front-runners are deeply unpopular with voters, but Clinton elicits a more visceral mistrust.
It didn’t help matters last week when her husband, Bill Clinton, met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch for an impromptu discussion on an airport tarmac in Phoenix, sparking suspicions among Republicans and head-slapping among Democrats. Lynch has said the meeting was innocent but regrettable.
Character is Clinton’s trouble spot, according to polls that have charted an increase in the number of people who say they don’t like and don’t trust her as the campaign has marched ahead.
In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in late June, 69 percent of respondents said they were concerned that Clinton has a record or reputation as untrustworthy. A CBS News poll in June found 62 percent saying Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, while 33 percent said she is. Her ratings on this were similar to Trump’s (63 percent not honest, 32 percent honest). But on a separate measure of being forthcoming, 33 percent of registered voters said Clinton says what she believes while 62 percent said she does not. By contrast, 56 percent said Trump says what he believes.
People are far more likely to say Clinton is well prepared for the job, while rating Trump as unsuited for the White House, said pollster Peter D. Hart, who oversaw the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll. Where she falls down is on the more nuanced question of character and trust, he said.
“For Hillary Clinton it’s all personal and about values,” Hart said. “It’s, ‘Can I trust her? Do I feel comfortable with her?’ “
Trump, in his name-calling style, hits a political nerve with his constant reference to Clinton as “Crooked Hillary.”
Clinton’s campaign is trying to address the trust deficit in two main ways. First, through Clinton’s own words and actions–including her remarks on the topic at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition gathering in Chicago last week and in what her backers say was a forthright attempt to provide information to the FBI.
Clinton had volunteered to sit for an interview months ago and has said she is cooperating completely in an inquiry that could result in criminal charges for her or aides who sent and received classified material on a system that operated in parallel to government email accounts.
From the campaign’s perspective, the interview is medicine best swallowed now, before the full heat of the head-to-head campaign with Trump. The issue clouds the campaign nonetheless, since there is no word about whether anyone will face charges or discipline. An interview with the most significant potential target of the investigation is often the last step before a decision on whether to issue indictments, so it is possible that the legal matter is near an end. Lawyers have said charges against Clinton are unlikely.
Monday, July 4, 2016
The 5 most serious accusations from Republicans’ Benghazi report
Remember that heated hearing in the fall when Hillary Clinton sat in front of Congress for 11 hours and defended her handling of the Benghazi terrorist attacks? Well, a report from that investigation (of which Clinton’s testimony was just one part) is out, capping the two-year process that is the ninth overall investigation into the Benghazi, Libya, incident.
There is no smoking gun, but the report does conclude that Clinton and the Obama administration more broadly should have realized how endangered U.S. outposts in Libya were at the time of the 2012 attacks and done more to protect them and the four Americans–including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens–who were killed.
Or, more accurately, the Republicans on the special Benghazi committee concluded that. Democrats on the committee called this whole thing a partisan witch hunt to bring down Clinton’s presidential run and released their own, much softer report on Monday. But those two reports aren’t even the sum total of the committee’s work; two of the committee’s most conservative lawmakers released a more critical report, which was not signed off on by the rest of the GOP members.
For our purposes, we’re going to focus exclusively on Republicans’ main report, since Republicans are the ones in control of the committee and Congress, and this is the report a majority of the committee members signed off on. It’s also the one that will be at issue in the 2016 presidential race.
Clinton said Tuesday she’d “leave it to others to characterize this report but I think it is pretty clear it is time to move on.” Her campaign had no trouble characterizing it for her, calling it “a partisan sham” and full of “discredited, conspiracy theories.” Clinton has rebutted many of the report’s key findings in the past.
This one brings several new details about that night that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the Benghazi committee chairman, says should “fundamentally change the way you view Benghazi.” The State Department disagrees there’s anything new in this report, and The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian writes “there’s no significantly new information” about the U.S. response to the attacks.
Still, the report is big news in the political world. Here are the five most serious findings from it, according to reviews of the report from The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung and Adam Goldman, NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell, Politico’s Rachael Bade, CNN’s Stephen Collinson and a news conference House Republicans on the committee gave Tuesday:
1. The State Department failed to protect U.S. diplomats in Libya.
This is the report’s bottom line. It doesn’t necessarily lay the blame at Clinton’s feet–Gowdy had said he wanted to keep the report focused on the facts, not personalities–but the conclusion is clear: Clinton and the Obama administration should have realized the risks.
To back up this conclusion, CNN’s Collinson reports that requests for more security in Benghazi leading up to the attacks went unheard or were refused.
Even House Democrats’ version of their report acknowledges that “security measures in Benghazi were woefully inadequate,” pointing the finger at the security and law enforcement arm of the State Department rather than Clinton. Ambassador Stevens was at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi with only two official bodyguards even after other Western diplomats had left the country.
NBC’s Mitchell notes the report finds that the then-vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a pretty big player in national security crises, did not join an emergency video conference because “he had left to return to his residence to host a dinner party for foreign dignitaries.” Mitchell reports he received one update on the attacks during the dinner.
2. The CIA missed warning signs.
The report says the agency misread how dangerous Libya, in the midst of a revolution after overthrowing its longtime dictator a year earlier, was at the time. Recall the attacks took place on Sept. 11 and 12, 2012.
“One section of the report seems to allege that U.S. officials fundamentally misunderstood who their allies were at the time,” writes NBC’s Mitchell.
To illustrate that point, the report details how there was confusion in U.S. intelligence circles about who ultimately came to the Americans’ rescue. Previous reports concluded it was a “quasi-government militia.” This report says it was a military unit loyal to the country’s former dictator.
3. The Defense Department failed to rescue Americans in time.
Or at least, it was late in deploying help, waiting until well after the initial attack had begun even though President Obama had authorized the military to do whatever it needed to hours earlier. U.S. military forces didn’t reach Benghazi until 2 p.m. the day after the initial attack on the diplomatic compound. The report blames a breakdown in the chain of command for this, including a debate among U.S. Marines about whether they should wear their military uniforms or civilian attire.
4. The Obama administration “stonewalled” the investigation.
The administration engaged in what Gowdy described as “intentional,” “coordinated” and “shameful” stonewalling of his investigation. The report says the State Department, Pentagon and CIA refused to turn over all of the agencies’ records and delayed getting others to Congress, a process that Republicans said delayed their investigation by months.
At the heart of this accusation is Clinton’s use of a private email server exclusively while she was secretary of state. A hacker had revealed a year before this investigation that Clinton used a private email account to conduct some of her business, but it wasn’t until the Benghazi committee asked the State Department for some of her emails in 2014 that everyone realized just how much she used her private account: The State Department realized there were no records of emails sent or received on an official State Department email account set up for Clinton.
Since then, of course, thousands of her emails have been released, but Clinton was first allowed to delete emails on her server she considered private.
The report blasts that, saying it “makes it impossible to ever represent to those killed in Benghazi that the record is whole.”
5. A Clinton aide influenced the State Department’s review.
As noted above, Congress isn’t the only branch of government that reviewed what happened in Benghazi. The State Department did its own inquiry, which was intended to be internal but independent.
But according to a section of the Benghazi investigation that Politico’s Bade obtained, the report “was consistently influenced by” Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff. Mills has said she offered suggestions on drafts, but they were merely that: suggestions.
What the report doesn’t answer.
Among the most prominent areas the report doesn’t shed light on are allegations that the United States was helping get weapons to Libyan rebels. Any such operation, which Bade reports Clinton herself supported but the administration never confirmed or denied, would have been top-level secret. (Recall the 2012 attacks happened a year after a successful uprising against Libya’s longtime dictator, Moammar Gaddafi.)
Apparently the government still refuses to answer questions about whether the operation existed; the report says the administration refused to let anyone who might have knowledge of such a program testify.
Friday, July 1, 2016
Tim Tebow’s faith on display once again, this time in midair
Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow rushed to offer support and comfort to distressed passengers on a Delta Air Lines flight over the weekend when a man onboard experienced a medical emergency.
Passengers of Flight 1772 from Atlanta to Phoenix took to social media to praise Mr. Tebow’s selfless actions and the crew’s professional response when an older passenger reportedly started having heart problems.
“[Tebow] made a stand for God in a difficult situation,” passenger Richard Gotti wrote in a Facebook post Sunday that has now been shared over 9,000 times and confirmed by ABC News’s Jeffrey Cook. “He met with the family as they cried on his shoulder! I watched Tim pray with the entire section of the plane for this man.”
Tebow has never been shy about sharing his Christian convictions, and his public expressions of his faith have been both lauded and criticized in the past.
“Tim Tebow is one of the major venues for this ongoing argument about Christianity in our public life,” Tom Krattenmaker, author of “Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers” told The Christian Science Monitor in 2011.
People of faith see something much bigger than football, as Tebow defines what it means to follow Jesus in a jaded and uncertain modern world.
People tired of pro sports’ descent toward criminal behavior, vanity, and self-indulgence see in Tebow an honorable new model for manhood.
And people affronted by public displays of religious fervor see in Tebow a showy type of faith that offends and even perverts scripture,” as G. Jeffrey MacDonald wrote.
But when Tebow joined his fellow passengers in prayer on the Delta flight, he was contributing to a group effort of people pitching in the best way they knew how.
“I watched strangers from all over the world and every ethnicity come to the help of this man for over an hour! Whether it was chest compressions, starting an IV, helping breathe life into this man, or praying everyone helped!” wrote Mr. Gotti on Facebook.
Tebow helped the man’s wife and friend retrieve their luggage and waited with them at the hospital as the man received medical attention, as People Magazine reported. The man later reportedly died in the hospital.
A Delta spokesman confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a medical emergency had been declared on the flight, though the airlines doesn’t release information about who is on flights.
“We can’t say enough about the Delta professionals who care for our customers every day and we are grateful to our customers who are so often quick to extend kindness and care to one another,” Delta spokesman Brian Kruse said.
Tebow hasn’t commented on the incident publicly yet, but he spoke with People in February about prayerfully helping others, saying, “Our purpose is to bring faith, hope and love to those in their darkest hour of need. And those people are everywhere. You just have to open your eyes to see them.”
