Elementary, My Dear Watson

            Proving that there is a God, confirming scripture with some new archeological find, or advancing the argument of intelligent design versus the theory of evolution—all of these are fascinating matters to believers.   Spirit-filled people, however, often struggle to move past these basic tenets of faith and break into a higher realm for which they are well empowered but too often unengaged.  With apologies to Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson, this word, elementary, freeze frames the extent to which too many people have progressed in their spiritual walk.  All of us may exult in a well-written article that convinces us all over again that the Bible is true, that sin is wrong and that we should love one another.  But the paramount question of our day supersedes these issues; the real question is what are we doing about them?

            The early church may have needed assurance that God was real.  Indeed, they rehearsed these truths—not to convince the unbelieving world—but to encourage themselves.  “And being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.   And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is”  (Acts 4:23-24).  Once they reminded each other of who they were, and that God was on their side, they were ready to act.  “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:29-31).

            If the most exciting statement of faith we can muster is that we believe there is a God, we are in huge trouble.  This basic affirmation represents the spiritual equivalent of pre-school status.  Mathematics and science exist too, but acknowledging their reality hardly makes one a mathematician or scientist.  Belief in God only represents the prelims.  Even the devils believe this much.  We may be settled on the basics, but the ironic thing is that we may be way too settled to turn them into springboards for action.  So then, what does moving beyond elementary beliefs involve? 

            Spiritual warfare.  It means that it is time for the church to seriously wage spiritual warfare.  The early church clearly advanced from the basics into frontal assaults against satanic strongholds.  In 2 Corinthians 10:3-4, Paul said “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:  (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.”)  Apostolics must perfect their sensitivities to the principalities and powers that rage around us.  The Holy Ghost was not given to us to be a spiritual tranquilizer but as our source of power and witnessing.  Let us step up our operation in the dimension of the Holy Ghost.

            Intercessory prayer.  It is time for the church to focus on intense, protracted intercessory prayer.  Prayer saturated every aspect of the early church’s mission.  They were schooled prayer by Jesus; they were experienced in prayer’s miraculous outcomes in the expansion of the church; they were exhorted into prayer by the Apostle Paul who said, “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”  Romans 8:26. 

            Spirit-driven evangelism.  It is time for evangelism to be driven by the Spirit.  The greatest revivals in the New Testament did not happen through savvy demographic studies but by the leadership of the Holy Ghost.  New Testament revival accounts show that the hand of God was at work everywhere.  For example, “And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people…and believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.”  (Acts 5:12-14) “Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.  And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.  For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed.  And there was great joy in that city.”  (Acts 8:5-8)

            We are way beyond proving the existence of God or any other pursuit that titillates the intellect but neutralizes the spirit.  Science, philosophy and human wisdom cannot supersede faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.  Once we have faith, it is time to go on to completion, as the writer to the Hebrews said: “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”  Hebrews 6:1-2.  At times, we must return to elementary truths to make sure they remain intact, but the real work of the church lies in the realm of the Spirit.

            I am reminded of President Lincoln’ famous letter to General George B. McClellan, whose lack of activity during the US Civil War irritated him.  The president wrote:  “If you don’t want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.  Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln.”  General McClellan soon lost his job.  He loved the army; he just didn’t want to use it to fight and win a war.  Even so, the church must not flex its muscles in the mirror of self admiration.  It is imperative for us to advance to the real battle.  “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”  (Acts 1:8)

A Response to John McArthur’s Teaching on Tongues

In his exposition on 1 Corinthians 13, Paul’s chapter on love, John McArthur begins with a critical analysis of tongues.  It is very evident from his introduction that he speaks from a bias against the modern phenomena of glossalalia, or speaking in tongues.  As he progresses through his lesson, he clearly states his rejection of the tongues movement of today.  At the same time, he seems to approve of the New Testament version of tongues.  Ancient tongues-speaking was legitimate, according to McArthur, but modern tongues-speaking is counterfeit.  He does not offer any reason for this shift from approved tongues to non-approved tongues nor does he say when it happened.  (He may do this in later studies.) 

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (KJV)
¹ Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.   ² And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.   ³ And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

McArthur makes a great deal of the definition of tongues as “languages.”  He emphasizes that the Greek word used for tongues is glossa, which is normatively translated as languages.  This is correct.  No Greek scholar would dispute this.  He does, however, extrapolate the idea that the languages were human languages from the way the word is used throughout the Bible, especially the New Testament.  Although he does not say this directly, he strongly implies that because the languages were human languages, the spiritual aspect of speaking in tongues is diminished.  In fact, he excoriates, brutally I think, the Corinthian church for operating the spiritual gifts in the flesh, rather than in the Spirit.  In one instance, he even implies that the Corinthians were paganistic in their practices, if not beliefs.  

But the core of McArthur’s case against the modern tongues movement turns out to be little more than a straw man.  He cites the main reason for rejecting tongues is that it is babbling or gibberish, and not a real language.  Now, we see why he spent so much time showing that glossa is a human language.  Legitimate tongues, or languages, are uttered in accordance with all the rules of language.  A language has structure, meaning and content.  Regardless of the family of languages, substantive ideas must be conveyed through the use of language.  Babbling and gibberish have no such structure.  Babbling is merely a hodgepodge of nonsensical syllables strung together and called a “prayer language” or a “devotional language.”  Although he claims he could cite more sources, he refers to one linguistic scholar who researched the glossalalia movement for several years and never one time came across anyone who was “speaking in tongues” using a proper language.  On this basis, McArthur dismisses the entire tongues movement today as illegitimate. 

This dismissal is far too sweeping.  It is estimated that over 600 million people have experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit as they did on the day of Pentecost.  The roots of the practice and teaching go back to the era of the church fathers.  Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Chrysostom of Constantinople and Augustine of Hippo all provide evidence of the spiritual gifts, including speaking in tongues.  Traces of the gift, although suppressed and discouraged, appear throughout the middle Ages.  Prior to the reformation, groups such as the Albagenses and the Waldenses were reported to speak in tongues.  Later, tongues speaking was reported among the Quakers, Pietists, Moravians and even the early Methodists.  In the nineteenth century, a renewed interest in spiritual gifts began building, especially in England and the United States.  Then, the Azusa Street Revival broke out at the turn of the twentieth century, starting a tidal wave of belief and experiences in the gifts.  

McArthur seems to brand all of the above as unscriptural and illegitimate.  He does not cite one reference to theologians or scholars, of which there are many, who take the opposite view.  He does not cite one instance of speaking in tongues that satisfies his definition of a language.  He evidently believes that all tongues speaking after the Apostolic age is in error. 

My view is that tongues as the Spirit give the utterance is indeed a language.  It is not babble or gibberish.  There are hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects, however, and some of them are so strange that classifying them as a language is difficult.  Certain African tribes, for example, have clicking sounds for words.  Many Oriental languages rely more on tones than phonemes.  Many languages are now extinct.  The Holy Spirit does speak through us today in tongues.  Some tongues are unknown, as defined by the Apostle Paul.  Yes, the word unknown was italicized by the King James translators.  McArthur simply dismisses this as well, but does not provide a good reason for doing so, except that it doesn’t fit his paradigm.  This is not an acceptable position for a Bible teacher to take.  Check out the following websites: http://www.av1611.org/jmelton/italics.html  http://www.chick.com/reading/books/158/158_11.asp

I must pause in my response because of time, but there are more problems with McArthur’s teaching on 1 Corinthians 13 that I see.   For example, how can he demonstrate that there is a definitive difference between the tongues of the disciples in Acts, or even the Corinthian church, and the tongues of this modern age?  Why does he not differentiate between the baptism of the Holy Spirit accompanied by tongues and the gift of tongues as practiced in the church in Corinth?  How does his position square with the Apostle Paul’s admonition that the church was not to forbid speaking in tongues?  These and many more questions deserve answers.  I hope to get back to this in the coming week.

Snowing on Climate Change’s Prematurely Triumphant Parade

King Science of my generation, politicized, exploited and prostituted by agenda-driven money-mongerers, has suffered a cataclysmic, humiliating collapse.  I am shaken to the core.  I well remember the lectures of chemistry, physics and astronomy teachers as they cast the sacred principles of the scientific method in reverent terms.  All of life’s answers were to be found in petri dishes, test tubes, electron microscopes and sine curves.  Proud science towered over all things meaningful—impervious to tribal legends, religious dogma, historical spin, prejudicial feelings, social sentiment, elitist preferences, political pressure and power brokers.  It was the hot knife cutting through the butter of unsubstantiated beliefs.  It was the bucket of ice water thrown on supremely comfortable and cozy traditions.  It was the blaring wake-up horn jolting the lazy and lethargic from their stupors.  If we could believe anything, we could believe science.  If we could trust anyone, we could trust scientists.  If we could know anything, we could know the conclusions of the scientific community. 

Climate change—now humiliated by Climategate—has exploded our solemn view of omnipotent science.  The embarrassment is so deep that the mainstream media has not—as of this writing—dared to mention it.  ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USAToday and other major news outlets have totally ignored the story.  Professor Phil Jones of East Anglia University, UK, considered the High Priest of Climate Change, has confessed to the egregious manipulation of the data, all done to “prove” or at least enhance the claims of the climate change believers.  Liberal elites around the world are so totally invested into the theory that the planet is getting warmer, that, evidently, they cannot disabuse themselves of the notion.  The politics of the coming transformation planned for society because of global warming involved such colossal shifts of wealth and power that those who were and are engineering it cannot walk away from it.  This is a hoax of epic, historic proportions. 

Climate Change is not a stand-alone theory.  Its fraudulent seed has generated an undergrowth of theories and actions that have had wide repercussions in the sciences.  Coming under its shadow are the sciences of climatology, meteorology, ecology, anthropology, geology, oceanology and biology, just to name a few.  It has cast aspersions on renowned agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), not to mention the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  

But, the tenets of the climate change faith will wane and its priests, like Al Gore, will live in infamy.  (Has the Nobel Peace Prize ever meant less?)  There is a much greater damage, however, that the entire field of science has incurred.  The scientific world was so corrupted by its proclivity to embrace a political agenda that it may struggle for decades to regain the unassailable prestige that it once enjoyed.  One wonders how many other routinely accepted proclamations of science will now come under suspicion.  If the people who espoused the theory of anthropogenic global warming were either so unscientific or so unscrupulous as to propagate it without the critical investigation and peer review that they themselves codified over a century ago, then why should we believe anything they say?  

For example, why should we believe any statement scientists make about the origin of the universe or the theory of evolution?  What data are they leaving out?  We now know that they can fabricate a “hockey stick” graph to favor their pet theories.  Their computer models may indeed project a preferred outcome, but we do not know whether or not the raw data they feed into the formulas are made up.  How much does junk science or pop science figure into the conclusions they draw?  

All kinds of social science theories are now up for question as a result of climategate.   What do we really know about the so-called population explosion?  What about sexual orientation?  What about the constant vilifying of the food industry through “scientific” nutrition studies?  What about the medical sciences’ pontifications about pandemics like the “swine flu?”  Should we accept their opinions as bible?  

In addition, what about the environmentalists claims about cutting down old growth forests?  Is off-shore drilling really bad?  Are the claims that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will kill off the caribou really true?  Who said?  How did they gather their data?  Who stands to gain grant money by keeping the oil companies at bay?  What about other claims that urban expansion will harm endangered species?  Are these people really scientists or are they people in the business of perpetuating a myth in order to profit from government handouts? 

I still believe in science—true science.  I don’t much believe in scientists anymore.  True science establishes fact.  It does not concern itself with the politics of the facts.  Whenever science starts caring about what the facts imply, it is no longer science, but a religious faith.  Climate change was never a science.   The fact that it was accepted as such by scientists no less, says more about the scientists than it does Climate Change.  Those who backed it were not dubious sci-fi free-lancers whose work got published in the National Enquirer or Star Magazine.  They represented our premier men and women of knowledge. 

It is impossible to calculate the damage they have done to themselves. 

Wild, Unfounded Assumptions:

Why the Single-Payer Health Care System Will Not Work 

The missing ingredient in the logic of single-payer healthcare proponents is extremely simple:  human behavior.  Their proposed system can only work if they can count on each player in the chain of health care events to behave exactly as they assume he or she will.  If anyone refuses to perform at his or her minimum, prescribed levels, everything falls apart.  

The statist mind has no problems in making such assumptions.  Players in the system are robot-like droids with on-off switches to govern their behavior.  Congress passes the law, and voila!  All switches turn on.  The machine purrs along precisely as planned.  Congress watches over the equipment with tiny screwdrivers to tweak it here and there, turn this up slightly from time to time, turn that down slightly from time to time, and that’s all there is to it.  It’s beautiful!  Everybody is happy!

Problem.  These robots don’t exist.  They never will.  That means that nasty human beings are doing what the robots are supposed to do.  These human beings are downright impossible to control.  If they don’t get what they want, when they want it, they reach up and turn their switches off.  And they are never satisfied.  The pay that motivated them a year ago no longer suffices.  They want raises, bonuses and perks.  The levels they performed at a year ago no longer hold true.  They do less and less and want more and more for it.  It’s maddening.

And so, let’s superimpose this template on the single-payer health care system and see what happens.  First, we have to identify the players.  To keep it simple, I will reduce it to six representative cogs in the system:  Society, congress, the taxpayer, the bureaucrat, the healthcare provider and the patient.  Will each of these players behave according to the prescribed guidelines?  Will they increase their demands or decrease their productivity?  Will they progress according to projected statistical norms?  Critical relationships exist between all the players and this interdependency cannot be overstated.  In the physical world, for example, if water doesn’t boil at 212 degrees or freeze at 32 degrees, the entire ecosystem will be thrown into chaos.  In a system as critical as health care delivery, if any player falls below minimums or exceeds maximums, chaos ensues. 

Society.  Societies are dynamic, not static.  Nearly any category we consider is capable of undergoing telling changes.  What happens if the labor pool is impacted by an excessive number of young and inexperienced workers coming into the system, an excessive number of retirees leaving the system or too many workers have earned benefits that exceed the optimum level that the system can sustain?  What if the population migrates to urban areas in significant numbers?  What if we suffer a major epidemic that affects millions of people?  What if we have another 9/11?  Moreover, social policy can have profound consequences on a society, e.g. abortion.  Since becoming legal in 1973, over fifty million citizens are missing from the population.  That represents a shrinkage in numbers of nearly 20%.  Who would dare postulate that abortion has made little or no difference in the state of the nation?  The point is that needs, trends, shifts and developments that occur in society do not happen in a vacuum.  

Congress.   Legislative bodies frequently pass laws that deliver unintended consequences to the constituency.  In taxation, the power to tax entails the power to encourage, restrict or punish the consumers of the taxed commodity.  For example, a tax hike of one dollar on Product A that sells one million units does not—as statists apparently believe—equal one million dollars.  Why?  Because the tax dampens interest in the Product A or puts it out of range for enough people that it may only raise a half million dollars.  Those who do buy Product A may not be able to buy Product B anymore, thus the tax generated by Product B is lost.  In the end, the tax revenue going to the government increases by very little, but those who manufacture and sell both products—and their workers—are deeply affected.   Real life examples abound in agriculture, energy, food processing, automobile manufacturing, construction trades and so on. Health care, in fact, may serve as the prime example of this occurrence.   What if congress bans a product or procedure in the health care industry, an action which occurs on a regular basis?  Shock waves reverberate through the industry, and health care practitioners may be forced to prescribe a more expensive substitute or perform a more costly procedure than the one now banned. 

The Taxpayer.  I have already alluded to the change in behavior of the taxpayer as a result of a tax hike.  (By the way, the taxpayer is not a nameless, faceless statistic somewhere on the face of the earth.  I am the taxpayer.  You are the taxpayer.)  The taxpayer is the one who makes all the government programs and policies viable because we fund them all.  For ease of communication, I will speak in the first person singular in this paragraph.  I don’t like paying taxes.  I avoid paying them as much as is legally possible.  If the government keeps narrowing my legal loopholes to force me to give it more and more of my money, it will change my behavior.   

Let me illustrate.  If I work hard enough to make one hundred dollars an hour (I don’t), then I want to keep as much of that as possible.  If the government now says that I have to give it forty of those one hundred dollars, I have less incentive to make the one hundred dollars.  Why should I work at a hundred dollar pace to make sixty dollars?  Instead, I will give my employer a sixty dollar hour because that’s all I am going to get out of it.  Each time my taxes go up, I have less reason to work harder.  At some point, I don’t have any motivation to work at all because the government is going to take so much of it that it doesn’t matter anyway.  

Studies in behavioral sciences demonstrate this very clearly.  If a monkey gets an electric shock every time he reaches for a piece of food, he will continue reaching only as long as the satisfaction of his hunger is greater than the pain of the shock.  When the pain of the shock becomes greater, he will choose to die of starvation rather than risk the electrical shock.  That’s what I will do.  

And guess what?  The government is not going to let me die of starvation.  It is going to force some other taxpayer (you) to work for me and give me your money.  You are now going to support me.  You are going to pay for my open heart surgery, my oncology treatments and my medications.   You are not going to do this, are you?  Let me guess what you are going to do.  You are going to quit working and let the government force some other taxpayer to take care of both of us.  If this keeps up, when are we going to run out of taxpayers?  I hope we never do.  Would you call that a wild, unfounded assumption?  Hey!  You’re starting to get it. 

The Bureaucrat.  The bureaucrat has a nice job.  He doesn’t know you or me.  We are just numbers to him.  He doesn’t have to worry about making a profit or a loss to his employer.  He has job security; he gets substantial raises automatically; he needs little aptitude and even less personality. He just has to keep the boss happy.  His boss cannot suffer politically for any decision or action that he makes or takes.  If he can avoid that, he’s in for life.  The bureaucrat need not be particularly bright or extraordinarily competent; in fact, too much competence can get him fired.  The bureaucrat makes decisions every day.  He decides whether or not I have to pay a tax, a fine, a fee, a tariff, a duty or a levy.  He decides whether or not I get the surgery I need from the doctor I want or if it is too expensive at my age.  It all depends on the budget of his agency and the availability of the surgeons.  He decides whether or not I qualify for an exemption, a privilege, a special consideration, a restricted status, an admission into a program or a payment.  He can pay me, charge me, stonewall me, ignore me, deny me or throw the book at me.  He can go as fast as he wants to or as slow as he wants to.  

What motivates the bureaucrat?  Little or nothing.  If he thinks I am a political nightmare for him, I might get my way.  If I am an obscure little nobody, he has no pressing reason to do anything for me.  He is guided by his political calculus and his budget—period.  At five o’clock, his lights go off and don’t come back on until eight o’clock the next morning—unless it is one of eleven federal holidays or one of thirteen sick days or one of twenty-six vacation days he gets.  Most of us despise the bureaucrat but we all have to work with him and through him.  As long as there are government programs, there will be bureaucrats.  As long as the government gets bigger, there will be even more bureaucrats.  

Will a government run, single-payer health care system overload the bureaucracy?  From our standpoint, yes.  From the perspective of the bureaucrat, no.  He continues at a steady pace.  Studies show that he takes care of a certain number of customers on average.  He has no need to beat the average.  Those he doesn’t get to will be handled tomorrow.  It really doesn’t matter if there are ten people or a hundred people in line.  He moves at his own pace.  Anyone who dies in line will be handled by another bureaucrat.  It’s just easier that way. 

The Health Care Provider.  The health care providers—the doctors, nurses and hospitals—bear the brunt of the single-payer system.  They have to deal with both the bureaucrats on the one end and the patients on the other.  Pressure from both sources will become increasingly intolerable.  Anticipating this colossal overhaul of the system, many would be health care professionals are already choosing alternative careers.  (More about this in a moment).  They understand that the demand for service will go up with the addition of millions of previously uninsured consumers to the clientele pool.  At the same time, they know that they will be forced to negotiate with one source of all their income:  the government run by bureaucrats.   

When the government has no competition, they essentially own a monopoly over the industry.   All the bad things that corporations did a hundred years ago when monopolies were legal will be repeated by the government all over again.  They will force providers to submit to their demands.  They will pay when and how much they want to.  Anyone who doubts this must remember that everything is a function of the budget, regardless of a policy that sets the standard rates for all medical procedures and medications.  If the health care providers don’t get satisfaction, where can they run for relief?  Another government agency, of course—also run by bureaucrats.  Whistleblower laws?  Not likely.  Complaints will be moved to the second Tuesday of next week.  

Health care providers will be pushed into ethical dilemmas on a daily basis.  Will they sign off on a patient who needs a procedure that the system will not pay for?  Will they fail to schedule vital tests that are necessary for a correct diagnosis?  Will they factor in a patient’s age, gender, race, abilities or aptitudes in their decision to treat?  Will they walk away from a patient that could be cured but will not receive treatment because of non-medical factors? 

Back to career choices.  If fewer American citizens opt for a career in the medical profession because of low pay, the flood gates will swing open wide for foreign doctors and nurses.  Will their educational background be on par with U. S. doctors?  Will foreign health care professionals with specialties that don’t match the precise openings in the U. S. be allowed to practice here as a way to get a foot in the door?  Will the quality of health care go down as a result?  A nod in the affirmative seems likely for all questions. 

The Patient.  Patient behavior under a single-payer system will change from the status quo.  First, anything offered for free precipitates a flurry of activity in almost any field.  If patients know that the visit to the doctor, a trip to the emergency room or the dispensing of medications will not cost them any out-of-pocket expenses, they will access these services in record numbers.  This is known behavior, proven by hundreds, even thousands of years of observing how markets operate.  Why do retail outlets lower prices and have sales?  Because it works!  People flock to cheap and free.  Medical care will be no different from the typical marketplace experience. 

Second, free health care will encourage patients to remember—even manufacture—other medical conditions that need to be diagnosed and treated.  Conditions that were ignored or dismissed for years will suddenly become acute problems that require professional attention.  

Third, when health care becomes a right instead of a privilege, the level of legal involvement necessarily escalates.  For example, if the government denies certain treatments for too many persons diagnosed with the same condition, red flags will go up and class action lawsuits will pop up everywhere.  At the very least, test cases will be tried in jurisdictions all over the country until one of them yields the result that the lawyers were looking for.  Jurists will not be the doctors’ friend.  Why?  Because the primary reason that single-payer health care was passed into law was to extend health care coverage to the little guy who was shut out of the previous system.  In the end, I believe that the little guy will prevail in the courts.  

As a matter of fact, we have single-payer systems in place now.  Veterans receive their care through this kind of a system.  So do Native-Americans.  Medicare is a hybrid, but it depends on government support as the major payer.  If you were to ask those who are involved in this system if they like the way it is working, you will get a resounding NO!  Requests for reimbursements by insurance companies and billings from doctors offices and hospitals meet with the same interminably slow pace and illogical decisions that will surely become the norm for any future single-payer system.  Many doctors would be forced out of business if they had to depend on Medicare patients for all of their income.  The government pays pennies on the dollar for procedures and treatments. 

Those who believe in single-payer systems are either hopelessly naïve or maliciously attempting to destroy the finest health care system in the world.  I predict that if the government succeeds in taking over the health care industry, it will fall into shambles sooner than we could imagine.  

So what do we do about health care?  Doing nothing is better than the present proposal.*  Yet, we don’t have to do nothing.  In a subsequent post, I will discuss some solutions that have a good chance of working.  Let’s not destroy what we’ve got in the dim hopes of getting something better.  Nearly two-thirds of Americans dislike the plan now before the congress.  Throwing them overboard will be a mistake that may be our undoing.

*Update:  This article was written before “Obamacare” became law.  As my post of 2-16-12 stated, we are already beginning to feel the impact of the new system.  This is a critical time in our history.  God help us.

Theodora Jordan - Happy Birthday!

Ninety-two years ago today, that would be January 7, 1918, my Mother was born in Indianapolis, Indiana.  She now lives at the Goerlich Center, a facility for Alzeimer’s patients, in Sylvania, Ohio.  Happy Birthday, Mother!  The picture at the keyboard was taken when she was probably in her mid-forties.  Here are some more pictures of her and various family members.

 

   

Thoughts and One Liners for the New Year

Communism is about to kill the goose of capitalism in order to get the golden egg.  After dinner, it will relax, pick its teeth and belch, too stupid to fathom the loss of future golden eggs.

The economy is human behavior that can no more be controlled than human psychology or sociology.  

Communism:  Government for Dummies

In communist governments, dummies who are not smart enough to produce decide who will produce and what will be produced.  The smart people end up leaving the system. 

Communism is the modern equivalent to pre-Civil War slavery.  One family owns the plantation; all the slaves work for  their food, clothing and shelter.  Slaves who want more than these necessities are greedy, selfish and evil.  The master decides who gets rewarded, who gets special privileges, and who lives or dies.

Communists bad-mouth capitalists, but when communism wins over capitalism, the new capitalists are the communists!

He controls the most is to be feared the most.

The more help you get from government, the less you will help yourself.

Big government first helps, then supports, then finally controls.

Big government is worse than big business because big government has armies and voters to enforce its rules.

Passing the Usability Test

           From the department of practicality, we need to address this question: Who are the people most likely to be used in church services?  Do pastors, music directors and ministry leaders have favorites or do they apply certain rules of usability to everyone?  Should those who sing, play or speak better than others be used without regard to anything else?  Generally speaking, those who choose participants for worship services or ministries operate on a set of criteria that is the same for everybody.  If you want to be used, you should prepare to pass the usability test.

            Ability.  Do you have the ability? Let’s face it: if you have little or no talent or innate ability for music, teaching, leadership or whatever traits are necessary for a given ministry, give it up.  Don’t make yourself and everyone else miserable by pretending to have some ability when you really don’t.  If you are being used and someone comes along who has more ability than you, gladly and graciously surrender your position for the good of the whole church.

            Availability.  Do you have the time?  If you have a sporadic work schedule or are faced with some other situation you can’t control, then availability may pose a problem for you.  Anyone who professes to have a ministry must make it a priority.  That means you must sacrifice other activities you would like to do because of a ministry you are called to do.  If ministry is truly a priority for you, then it is up to you to make yourself available. 

            Reliability.  Do you have the commitment?  “Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2).  Once you make a commitment to do ministry, your faithful execution of the task becomes paramount.  Most leaders will tell you that nothing is more important than faithfulness.  If you are asked to do something two or three times but fail to show up, you probably won’t be asked again. 

            Teachability.  Do you have the temperament?  Anyone who possesses a great desire to do something should also want to continually improve.  This calls for an openness to be coached, corrected, calibrated and changed in accordance with the leader or director who is in charge.  Even if you don’t totally agree with his or her style, your willingness to adapt has a great deal to do with your usability.  Every practice or training session must not turn into a tension-filled ordeal simply because you are not teachable.  To be effective in your performance, you must get on the same page as the leader.

            Accountability.  Do you have the character?  Having the ability and showing up on time at each practice or performance constitutes only part of the usability profile.  Basic Christian standards of character and behavior are absolute requirements.  If your discipleship is under question, you become a liability to the ministry team.  Moreover, many churches abide by certain platform standards that apply to anyone who a part of the worship team or music ministry.  If you take your ministry seriously, you must conform to these rules.

            Sociability.  Do you have the attitude?  Those involved in ministry must often work together with other people to get the job done.  You must be able to cooperate with others without insisting on having your own way all the time, being jealous or stubborn, or allowing or a competitive nature to dominate your attitude.   

            Possibility.  Do you have the spirituality?  Possibility has a direct correlation to faith in God.  Jesus said, “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).  Without being saturated with God’s power, ministry can become a matter of technicalities or carnal considerations. But the anointing of the Holy Spirit is far more meaningful than anything we can do.  We ought to do everything in our power to make things excellent.  At this point, however, the spiritual possibilities through faith in God take our ministry into the dimension of God’s power.

            Leaders sometimes have to make hard choices.  They have to consider the feelings of the people they deal with in making their decisions, and they don’t always feel comfortable explaining the real reasons behind the choices.  Their job would be far easier if each prospective participant in ministry would understand this set of simple criteria.  Those who don’t understand will probably always be hurt or frustrated.  Those who meet each of these requirements will probably always have a place in ministry.  

The Struggle for Integrity

                                                                                       

It used to be so simple.

Tell the truth.  Honesty is the best policy.  A man is as good as his word.  You lie, you fry.

                No more.  Integrity, we are told, is old school.  Billed as a repressive value of a dying culture, a culture rooted in hypocrisy and phony idealism, it deserves our scorn.  Nobody believes that stuff anymore.  Funny thing about integrity, though.  The less we have of it, the more we long for it. 

                Professional athletes, one in particular whose name dominated the news at the close of 2009, but certainly not the only one, have been pilloried unmercifully in the press for their lack of integrity.  Political careerists, televangelists, church leaders, entertainment personalities, executives of international conglomerates, military brass, university professors, high school teachers, doctors, lawyers, judges and on and on have constantly had their dirty laundry hung out to dry.  (One has to wonder if the media types who traffic in this garbage are themselves as pure as the driven snow!)  Cheaters, infidels, embezzlers, frauds and liars—one is tempted to quote the scripture:

                “There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  Romans 3:10-18.

                It seems unthinkable that anyone should be confused about something as basic as honesty and integrity.  For one thing, the Scriptures speak with such stark clarity about these matters that all of us should be solidly convinced.  But beyond that, common sense, the human conscience or the fear of consequences ought to serve as powerful deterrents to dishonesty.

                But, the carnal nature is too devious for such simplistic views.  The truth is that too many people find ways around the truth.  Moreover, they have discovered that they can define truth in many different ways.  They can have their own truths.  So, what is infidelity to one is merely creative therapy to another.  Or, what is lying to one is simply “truth in a larger, more meaningful context” to another.  What is fraud to one is “justifying a previous generation’s injustices” to another.  Look at the following excuses our culture often offers up for dishonesty:

                Managing impressions: Some believe they have the right, or even duty, to control their publicly perceived image.  If it means misrepresenting facts, withholding information or embellishing an image, it’s okay.  Agenda-driven actions:  Goals thought to be worthy or noble enough cause people to “sell” them by exaggerating, hiding or manipulating facts.  “Yes, I lied, but it was necessary to get the right outcome.”  Protection:  Some deflect threats to their persons, families, possessions, or finances by dishonest means.  They call it self-defense.  Context:  Those who champion the causes of the oppressed, aggrieved or injured often justify wrongdoing by reversing blame.  They believe the context of past wrongs in which their actions take place cancels out any moral turpitude of their own.  Competition:  Pressing for an edge in position or recognition leads some to believe that fairness is all that matters; eye for eye, tooth for tooth; get them before they get you.  Other excuses include greed, selfishness, prejudice and various forms of the works of the flesh.

                For the world, these equivocations come as no surprise.  It does shock us, however, that some professing believers would handle the Scriptures the same way.  But, we have been warned.  Peter wrote, “They that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.”  2 Peter 3:16.  Also, Paul admonished Timothy, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”  2 Timothy 2:15. 

                Someone has defined honesty as our relationship with others; integrity is our relationship to ourselves.  Integrity drives honesty.  As pastors, ministers, organizational and church leaders and saints, I am extremely concerned that we maintain our basic integrity because it determines the way we deal with each other.  This is more than a platitudinous “be good,” an insistence on doctrinal correctness or cosmetic conformity.  In a very real sense, integrity represents the backbone of the church and the organization.  It is believability, trust, shared conviction and good faith interaction.  It’s the “I’ve got your back” kind of commitment.

                Apostolic people who attend congregations in fellowship with the United Pentecostal Church, International should be very grateful for the integrity that exists among our ministers.  Our organization maintains a high standard for our ministers.  We ask them to sign an affirmation statement every two years that vouches for their integrity.  With few exceptions, we continue to embrace the same devotion to the expectations of the Scripture and the agreed upon provisions of our ministerial manual that we always have.

                Such vigilance is encouraged by the words of the Apostle Paul:  “In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren.”  2 Corinthians 11:26.  He likens false brethren to every kind of danger imaginable.  Everything falls apart when there is no integrity to cement it together.  And so, when a saint interacts with a pastor, there should be absolute trust in each other’s character.  When ministers talk among themselves, there should be no question as to the motive, intent or substance of the conversation.  Everything we do must originate with who we are. 

                Should it be a struggle?  Yes.  Good comes from struggle.  It forces self-examination, realignment and re-commitment.  The maze of confusing new issues, the shifting sands of popular beliefs and pressure of insincere voices make the struggle necessary.  At day’s end, when the struggle briefly abates, we must always make sure that our integrity remains intact. 

                 “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.”  Psalm 51:6.