As someone who was  active in pro-life legislative action in the 1990s, I can say how vigorously the pro-abortion movement opposed any sort of regulation on abortion. In 1995, my family and I lobbied in Montana for parental notification law, only doctors being allowed to perform abortions, and informed consent. All of these were vigorously opposed by the pro-abortion movement.

In Pennsylvania, pro-abortion Governor Tom Ridge’s administration decided to ignore the basic health and safety of women by failing to inspect these facilities (aside; Makes voting for a pro-choice Republican seem like the bad choice it is) and that was followed by Democrat Ed Rendell, and it allowed Gosnell for many years to get away with murder.

The opposition to even the most reasonable legislation flies in the face of the most famous and accepted pro-choice statement of our time by former President Bill Clinton who declared that abortion should be, “safe, legal, and rare.”

However, the actions of the pro-abortion rights movement was to oppose any regulation that might reduce abortions because of the need for abortion clinics to do a high volume of business.  While they don’t seem to understand this is true  in other businesses, the left did understand this was true in abortion. Many clinics have had to close due to declines in business and many others could not withstand healthy scrutiny. That’s why Kermit Gosnell literally got away with murder.

In the aftermath of the Gosnell trial,  the abortion industry may reap the fruits of its stubbornness. Pro-life lawmakers should be emboldened to pursue regulations that protect women and hold abortion clinics accountable for basic health and safety practices. After this case, abortion supporting lawmakers really would be wise to think twice before following radical pro-abortion activists in knee jerk opposition to any regulation.

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Controversy is brewing in a northern Georgia community after about 50 students prayed together Wednesday morning when school officials said they should have been in class.

The spontaneous prayer at Lumpkin County High School has become the talk of the town. Lumpkin County Schools Superintendent Dewey Moye said that a student started the prayer in a coach’s office at 7:30 a.m. and it lasted more than two hours.

There are many thoughts on this controversy.  One comment on the original article cited to Romans 13 as proof that the students had acted improperly by disobeying authority that declared they must be in their seats in first period.  On the same note, it’s conventional wisdom that one shouldn’t spend days praying that we’ve promised employers to spend working.

And there’s truth to that if we’re not getting the work done that was promised, we’re defrauding our employers Yet, it seems to me, there’s a danger in this.  When it makes national news when students in one high school miss one first period for prayer, it suggests that our biggest problem really isn’t that we have a bunch of prayerful slackers in this country, but that we have a bizarre expectation of God.

We expect God to be well-behaved. We expect the actions of His Spirit not to interfere with our day to day routine. We expect spirituality to enrich us personally while costing us nothing.  We expect God to be there for us when we need, want Him, and can fit him in. People who are not religious will nonetheless want a minister to, on behalf of God, bless their union. We expect God’s laws and teachings to jive with our expectations and if they don’t then either God’s wrong or he just didn’t say that.

I think we’re all guilty of expecting God’s Spirit to move in accordance with our convenience. We want to hear from God during our designated Bible study times or at church, but are we open to hearing his voice and being open to His Spirit at times unusual? Inconvenient?

That’s how He often moved in scripture.  Scripture tells us of how Jesus came by and disciples  ”immediately left their nets and followed them.” (Matthew 4:20) And when Matthew was at the receipt of custom, and Jesus called, he got up and followed him. (Matthew 9:9).  And in the old testament, Elisha was called while working in the fields. (1 Kings 19).

The scripture replete with truth that God will speak to obedient people and call them to action at times and places inconvenient, for His own purposes. Perhaps this is because what the Creator of Heaven and Earth wants is a little important than what we’re doing at the moment.

It’s not my place to say whether this lost period in a school day last week was the result of a moving of the Spirit of God or merely due to lack of responsibility, absentmindedness, or youthful arrogance.  But I would submit that the real story is not what the students did but our reaction to it.  And whatever issues the students face,  ours are far more perilous.

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Historically, third films have been notoriously problematic: Superman III, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and Spider-man 3 were all notorious for endings that provided a letdown for fans and the overall series. The Dark Knight Rises managed to (somehow) take Batman to a much darker place than he’d been in The Dark Knight with a glimmer of hope sneaking in before the end. Many of the pre-film trailers set such expectations.

Yet Iron Man 3 surprises in that its neither a cheesefest nor is it filled with the bleakness of The Dark Knight Rises. Instead, viewers are treated to  an action-packed ride that still manages to deal with perhaps the biggest existential question Iron Man faces:  Is Tony Stark a hero or just a guy in the suit?

The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) has been taking to the air to take responsibility for a series of deadly terrorist attacks. When Stark Head of Security Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) becomes suspicious of a visitor to Stark International and follows him, he lands in the hospital in critical condition. In a moment of pure bravado, Stark declares war on the Mandarin on International television and provides his home address. Stark refuses to leave and his house is hit by a terrorist attack that destroys his Malibu home and nearly kill his live-in girlfriend Pepper Potts.

Due to a malfunction in his armor, Stark is flung to Tennessee in the wintertime and his armor’s power dies. Like many of the best Iron Man stories from the comic books, Iron Man 3 reduces Tony Stark to the bare essentials: no robotic house, no unlimited bankroll. For most of the film, even though he’s in constant peril, Stark is out of armor, and so has to rely on his substantial wits.

Robert Downey, Jr. turns in a solid performance with a fully fleshed out three dimensional character who can go from cracking wise to having a panic attack in short order.  The story is cleverly written with a surprise twist as to who the bad guys are and what their ultimate endgame is what really defines the tone of the movie.

The film offers several thoughtful points. First, unlike the other two Iron Man films, Iron Man 3 puts the spotlight on average people who do heroic things. A boy helps Tony out and tries to save his life, a TV newsman helps Tony get a needed internet connection, the non-powered Happy Hogan goes after a bad guy,  a sheriff refuses to let one of the bad guys take Stark prisoner when he’s not sure of their credentials.  With Stark armor-free most of the movie, the film illustrates how people can show heroism by just doing their regular due diligence.

Iron Man 3  also focuses on the danger of scientists compromising a desire to help people and follow scientific procedure to the desire for money and ego.  Iron Man 3 deals with several pieces of scientific equipment that can be used for good or for evil. Iron Man 3 brings home the point of the need for ethics in world of the 21st century science.

The violence in the film is, at times, intense, but as in all the recent Marvel live action films, it is also sanitized.

Perhaps the most disconcerting part of the film centers around the relationship between the main characters, Tony and Pepper are officially living together and the film portrays that as essentially just as good as being married. Tony’s protective instincts for Pepper as well as his view of her as the one person he couldn’t leave without are pretty consistent with marriage. Yet, the film promotes this security in a cohabitating relationship suggesting that really one is just as good as the other.  The subtext to the film is that marriage is really not at all important: a horrible message to younger viewers.

The writers could appeal to the comic books where Stark is not married, but the one takeaway from the film is how little superhero films are impacted by the comic books upon which the hero was based.  For example, injections of the gene-altering Extremis is a key part of the plot in Iron Man 3. 

Yet,  other than how Extremis works within the bodies of recipients and the creator of Extremis from the comics in the movie appearing in Iron Man 3, none of the rest of the Extremis story line appear. In the 2006 story line, Extremis was sold to a right wing Christian domestic terrorist and the only way Iron Man could defeat him was by taking Extremis himself.

None of that took place in the film.  On the same note, the organization AIM as well as the Mandarin character were vastly different from their comic book versions.

This suggests  several things. First,  major changes to comic book universes probably are less culturally relevant than what many entertainment news editors believe. Certainly, comic books tend to be more like Las Vegas in that what happens in the comic books will end up staying in the comic books.

Second, it suggests that comic book stories really are only good for providing bits that can be used in a story, not a story itself.  Older stories like those written by Stan Lee in the 1960s may work as the basis for a cartoon episode but certainly aren’t complex enough to turn into a film. More modern stories tend to be just too dark and too political to actually make a good basis for a film that expects to appeal to mass audiences. The difference between the approach of film makers and that of comic book writers is why Iron Man 3 will be viewed by tens of million of Americans, while the latest Iron Man comic book is read by only 44,000.

Iron Man 3 illustrates the wisdom of the approach. Rather than sticking slavishly to a depressing comic story, Irom Man 3 chose to mix and match elements from a variety of stories and then change them)leading to an overall  pleasing result despite a few rough spots.

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In 1765, the British Parliament approved the Stamp Act for the American Colonies on many printed materials including newspapers, legal documents, and decks of cards. The British Government thought it was reasonable to apply taxes for the American Colonies to cover the cost of the French and Indian War which was (after all) fought for their security. The result was widespread dissatisfaction with a direct tax levied without their consent. In addition, including legal documents and decks of cards insured that both lawyers and sailors were among those who were very upset about the act.  The act ended up being repealed but not before it set in motion, tensions that would lead to Revolution.

In 1773, Parliament approved the Tea Act in what corporate gurus would cheerfully call a “Win Win” situation. It taxed tea, but the Tea was surplus from the East India Company that would be cheaper than what they were paying for tea without tax. And of course, the result of that was that the tea was dumped in Boston harbor by angry colonists.

I couldn’t help recalling these two incidents when thinking of the Senate’s overwhelming 74-23 vote to allow states to force online merchant to become their tax collectors on Internet commerce. We’re told often enough that this is a matter of “fairness” to brick and mortar stores.  And even perhaps, more reasonably, that the exemption of tax on e-commerce has been around for 20 years and was initially meant to allow it to get off the ground.

That may be, but like the Tea Tax and Stamp Acts, the measures are not popular with the people. The reason we’re a country is because an out of touch government decided to try and tax people in a way that was odious to them in the name of “fairness.” And just like the Stamp Act, passage of the Internet Sales Tax could lead to widespread disaffection that crosses political lines.

If passed, the bill is unlikely to save any local businesses as out of date business models are a bigger problem than competition from those who don’t charge sales tax. However, it may lead to major job losses-among members of Congress.

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Cohabitation is on the rise. And according to recent reports, people are even buying their first homes together before getting married.  There’s of course much to be said about this as a matter of societal decline. It seems, the main point of getting married is to dress in finery and get religious relatives off your back.

I really think that what these couples are missing out on is sad. They’re losing a lot of significance in their marriage. It’s why a film like The Five-Year Engagement bombed. I mean why exactly should the audience even care that the characters marriage is being delayed when they’re having copious amounts of sex as far as an R-rated film to go? A long-delayed engagement would have been an interesting plot in the golden age of film because there was something really being delayed or denied until marriage. Now, it’s a minor annoyance. It’s like if someone made a movie about having to wait to get their VCR repaired.

There’s a really blessings that I think many couples are missing out on.  When my wife and I married in 2002, I moved in with her the same day. This had followed many months of me walking her to her apartment and never staying the night.  Marriage represented a fundamental shift and change in my life. Similarly, it was a big deal a little less than three years when we bought our first house together.

The more and more things we decide to do before marriage and delink from marriage, the less it becomes a life-changing event, and the more it becomes merely a ceremony we go through for the sake of going through it, without understanding its meaning.  The best you can get is that it’s a celebration of a couples feelings for one another, but even that doesn’t really require a wedding. Young couples should be encouraged to do things in God’s order. It will bless their marriage with significance that in needs to stay strong.

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If there were one book of the Bible that raises my hackles, it’s the book of Revelation. (At least after Chapter 3.)

It’s a book I read through when it comes time on the reading schedule, but as to going to a Bible study on it or listening to a seminar or a sermon  on it, I don’t have much interest.

Over my life, I’ve seen the book of Revelation and related apocalyptic scriptures turn into battlegrounds for the most absurd fights imaginable as grown men have driven churches apart over a difference of a few days in magic timetables of the Lord’s coming. The debates are continued often without humility as battlelines are drawn and we hear the most far-fetched theories. For example I’ve heard it expounded that the locusts in Revelation 9 are actually helicopters.   There’s something about the book’s elaborate imagery that tends to bring out the worst in even the most sensible people.

With all the nitty gritty details, it seems we’ve sometimes forgotten the most important point of the Revelation that’s stated right at the beginning which was read in my church:

John, To the seven churches in Asia: Grace be unto you and peace from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before His throne;  and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first-begotten of the dead, and the prince over the kings of the earth. Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also who pierced Him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so. Amen.  “I Am Alpha And Omega, The Beginning And The Ending,” saith the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.-Revelation 1:4-8 KJ21

The coming of the Lord is not some puzzle meant for end times novelists and amateur eschatology experts to unravel, it is the blessed hope It is the victory of Christ and of his church over evil.

Whatever our efforts in culture, politics, and for the betterment of humanity, they are invariably corrupted if not in our lifetime than after at. Yet, that all ends when the king comes.

When I was younger, I often thought older people were so eager for the coming of the Lord for purely selfish reasons: they had lived the best part of their lives and the coming of the Lord would certainly be convenient for them. Though for us younger folks, it would mean missing out on a lot of life experiences such as marriage and our chance to make an impact on the world.

As I’ve grown up, I see how shortsighted and immature my own viewpoint was. Our best efforts are often weak and feeble.  The coming of the Lord is what the Apostle Paul said, “all creation groaneth and travaileth in pain” for. (Romans 8:22)

The Second Coming of the Lord is the great Hope of the Church. And it is because of that reality that we can lay down to sleep in peace even if our efforts on this Earth haven’t succeeded like we would like.

I’m still not really interested in time lines and the fine details of eschatological debates.  But  ”Marana’tha”  (O Lord come!) is the prayer of my heart.

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Surrender. You’re powerless over it. And you are. We’re powerless over anything that happens in Washington. And so what do you do? You try to make amends for the things that you’ve done wrong. You try to live differently. Take an inventory, and then you take control of the things you can and you work hardest on those.”

Now, the WND article manages to make news of Beck’s use of the phrase “surrender” but it’s really not clear what he makes. If you take a look at Glenn Beck’s Homepage, it’s still very political and he’s still selling a, “Never Surrender” t-shirt. Whatever Beck means, it’s clearly not what was some quick on the draw pundits mean by surrender. He’s not giving in on any of his issues, even though he knows Washington isn’t responsive.

Ironically, his call for surrender included a call to action that many Christians and Conservative would consider extreme:

“I’m telling you to get your kids out of these schools. They’re indoctrination camps. They’re turning our kids against us. They’re turning our kids against all of the values that we ever held, they’re wounding them even further. There’s nothing more important than our kids.”

Don’t expect a wave of parents pulling their kids out of public schools though. Public schools are easy and that brings me to the problem.   I’ve received outraged emails complaining about the interpretation that Beck has somehow called for people to stop fighting unjust government action.

Yet, there have been worse surrenders. We’ve surrendered the entertainment industry, we’ve surrendered academia, we’ve surrendered the public  education system. And a great many churches, to be politically correct and inclusive,  are surrendering,or at least retreating on sexual integrity and the sanctity of human life. And we’re being urged to retreat more and surrender more  in our culture in order to “win.”

We shouldn’t surrender, but perhaps to consider what we’re fighting for. If the only thing we’re willing to fight for is a political position, we’re doomed to lose.

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Fatherless marks the start of a new career for Dr. James Dobson as he and co-author Kurt Bruner who begin a trilogy of dystopian novels with the first installment.

Fatherless takes place in the year 2042, as the United States continues down its trendline of lower fertility, longer life spans and retirements, and a social safety net that requires large number of workers for each retiree or disabled user to survive.

Predictably this system is teetering on the verge of collapse as the United States population begins to decline in 2041. In 2038, to address the issue, Congress passed the “Youth Initiative” a system of “voluntary” euthanasia (euphemistically called transitions) by which citizens can end their lives and transfer their wealth to younger healthier individuals boastings hundreds of billions in savings.

Freshman Congressman Kevin Tolbert from Colorado wants to reverse the trend from depopulation and proposes legislation to restore tax credits and gains influence with an influential fiscal conservative who wants to be the next President but may have a hidden agenda. Tolbert also wants to undermine the influence of the transition industry. Julia Davidson at thirty-four year old journalist whose career is on the wane and hopes to make a comeback. Her editor assigns her to uncover the details of Tolbert’s plan and to portray it as a fanatical religious “breeder” plot to encourage a return to the dark ages. She hopes to use her friendship with Tolbert’s wife Angie as an in to access to the Congressman. As she digs deeper, she begins to uncover startling secrets.

Fatherless can be viewed two ways: as a dramatization of what the future looks like or as a novel. Lets take a look at what Fatherless suggests about the future first.

Dobson and Brunner suggest realistic and perhaps even milder than realistic results of current cultural and policy trends. America has developed into an immediate gratification nation with little ability to grasp what the long term results of its actions are.

For portraying the results of our politicians’ mad demagoguery on entitlements that pretends the system is sustainable, Dobson and Bruner deserve a medal.

However, they look at other trendlines as fatherlessness and single parent homes become more the norm leading to a generation where the vast majority of people are as the book title implies: fatherless. The consequence is insecure women and immature and angry men in numbers that even more alarming than today.

Another trend is illustrated in the character of Matthew Adams. Adams is a harried wanna be college professor whose college career is stalled by caring for his ailing mother. He wants her to transition so that he can inherit her money before it’s spent carrying for her as she goes through dementia. He’s a thoroughly unsympathetic character. However, the predicament he’s in was caused by his mother having him late in life without a husband, ensuring that he’d bare the brunt of the burden should her health decline before he’d been able to even begin his professional career.

Fatherless suggests some serious consequences for trendy childlessness and single parenthood, that there is a price to be paid for the en masse decisions of today’s twenty and thirty somethings. The ideas are politically incorrect but nonetheless accurate.

Fatherless is also noteworthy for a shift in conservative Christian books. In prior decades, a book like this would be most likely to put godless liberals or radical environmental as responsible for bringing about euthanasia. However, Fatherless casts fiscal conservatives as the villains who view one million “transitions” a year as merely good fiscal policy that saves money on entitlements. Indeed, those who are draining entitlements by breathing are called “debits,” which could have been something a former spokesman for the Romney campaign came up with. Debits are not only considered to be the elderly but the disabled who are carefully weeded out of the gene pool through genetic testing. The drop in the disabled population leads to cuts in special education and even less opportunity for children.

The shift from Dobson is worthy of note and probably is something Christians should consider. “Conservatives” who value money more than God and more than people should not be viewed as allies. If libertarianism and austerity at any cost are embraced, Christians could find the cost could come at the sanctity of human life as death can be quite economical and voluntary euthanasia is a perfectly plausible solution as a fiscal solution to relieve an overburdened entitlement system.

The idea of “debits” is key to the “transition industry” as Tolbert describes it, those who are elderly or infirmed are made to feel guilty which each breath they take, as society led by fiscal conservatives, declares their lives worthless. However, God declares all lives sacred.

Other shifts are believable extensions of current trends as society begins to look down its nose at “breeders” who have too many children and  forgo getting designer babies. This is a rational extension of our current culture where parents who have more than three or four children are often looked upon as nutcases and the same for couples who don’t use birth control. In Dobson’s and Bruner’s 2042 this disdain is now on parents who have more than two children and whose children aren’t designer babies.

On a positive side, the authors use the marriage of Kevin and Angie Tolbert to send a couple of powerful messages. First is that Christian marriages ought to be a witness to those around us. Secondly, they exalt sexuality in the Christian marriage, hitting back against a cultural suggestion that Christians are prudes who only have as much sex as they have to. It should go without saying that the authors don’t get graphic or lewd, but they don’t shy away from the topic.

Given the believability of the book’s portrayal of the future, it should serve as a cautionary tale of the danger our country is in. If the authors are right and we have something like 25 years until the worst of it, there are steps that can be taken by Christians individually and corporately to fight against it.

Perhaps, the biggest step that many could take is to stop judging families that have what they think are too many children. I’ve been in Evangelical small groups where Catholics and Mormons have been mocked for their large family sizes. Whatever, theological differences we have, certainly that sort of thing is wrong. In addition, I’ve had a relative who declared of a couple he thought was having too many children, “When the Good Lord said to replenish the Earth, he didn’t mean for you to do it yourself.” Such sentiments feed into an anti-life and anti-human belief system and need to stop.

Of course, aside from the book’s predictions and social commentary is the question of Fatherless as a novel. Here, the book is a bit of a mixed bag. While Dobson and Bruner are multi-published authors, neither has written fiction before.

On one hand, the book does work in some dramatic situations, but it may have trouble living up to its own hype.

Fatherless’ description compares itself to Hunger Games. While both take a look at dystopian futures, Fatherless spends a lot of time analyzing and explaining issues that led the country to the verge of economic and cultural collapse while Congressman Tolbert advocates for solutions to them. If anything Fatherless is what Hunger Games would be like if it were on C-Span.

Fatherless lacks many of the hallmarks of dystopian fiction. If there is a cabal behind it, it’s little different from modern PACs that exist and manipulate government today, nor does there appear to be a sinister grand design behind this other than a misguided attempt to get a fiscal house in order and a corporation’s desire to make money selling the liquid used in the transition procedure.

Fatherless also some basic writing craft mistakes that took me out of the story. In one scene in a restaurant, we were told what motion every character did and what they meant by it when we should really be shown the actions and if written right we can judge for ourselves what they meant. While jarring, these kind of mistakes were not everywhere in the manuscript.

While the characters began pretty flat and stereotypical, the authors did manage to flesh them out once Julia met with Angie and Kevin with the development on Julia Davidson very well done in making her complex character with very mixed motives.

Perhaps, the book’s biggest flaw was that it didn’t advance much in regards to the main plots. Much of the book was spent on Kevin’s “bright spots” proposal to increase fertility rates, but the measure seemed like whistling past the graveyard. More than anything, Dobson and Bruner introduce concepts and characters without having them do much. Hopefully, we’ll see a more forward-moving plot in Childless which is due out in October.

While less than perfect as a novel, Fatherless remains a compelling read for Christians concerned about our nation’s future.

The post Book Review: Fatherless appeared first on Caffeinated Thoughts.

The idea while well-meaning is far from practical. As much as we decry career politicians, we perpetuate them in our demands that presidential candidates be able to sound informed on even the most obscure issues and provide answers even if their answers are cliched sound bytes that really will tell us nothing of what they’d do in office because the candidates won’t really know until they confront the situation. Herman Cain learned that the hard way.

What Mr. Cain also learned is the new standard for “serious allegations” allowed the press to report anonymous and non-specific allegations of misconduct confirmed by anonymous sources who (of course) spoke on condition of anonymity. Dr. Carson is popular because of his inspirational Horatio Algerlike life story.  I pray he’s not foolish enough to actually consider a run for President.

However, the strong reaction to Dr. Carson’s speech tells us a lot about the Republican establishment on Capitol Hill.  If some random guy we’ve never seen shows up on YouTube giving a basic conservative speech and it creates a sensation it goes to show how little, the GOP establishment has been doing to communicate those core values. Rather than articulating common sense, they’ve become lost in the nonsense of Washington, of making compromises that will lead future generations over a massive cliff.

The Ben Carson phenomena suggests that Americans are starved for leadership and the Republicans are worthy of blame for the shortage.

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