Stirring the pot: is church music just a matter of personal preference?

My favorite email devotional comes from Dr. David Jeremiah.  Many pastors (not talking about my current pastor) think that music is just a matter of personal preference.  Assuming this is true (and I don't believe it is, but I try to get along for the sake of unity), what makes your personal preference better than my personal preference?  Anyway, before I really get up on my soap box, here is Dr. Jeremiah's Friday, March 26 devotional:

State-of-the-Art

...these people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts from Me.  Isaiah 29:13

Recommended Reading Matthew 23:25-27

In 2009, Dallas Cowboys' owner and general manager, Jerry Jones, forked out a little over $1 billion to build a state-of-the-art stadium with the largest Jumbo Tron in the world (seven stories high), artwork all over the stadium, retractable roof, platform decks, party suites, 120-foot high glass doors, and an average ticket price of $160 to get in. In similar fashion, the New York Yankees got a new stadium boasting a price tag of $1.3 billion with such amenities as aqua pools, state-of-the-art weight room, full-service kitchen, lounging area, 59-by-101-foot video scoreboard and 1,100 monitors scattered throughout the stadium. But despite the opulence, the expense, and the attention to detail, those stadiums simply cannot produce Super Bowl- and World Series-winning teams. That job is up to the players and coaches.

In the same way, modern facilities, amazing programs, and award-winning worship teams don't make a church spiritually alive; that job is up to the members. By uniting in faith and being dedicated to each other, the community, and the world, church members create a healthy body of Christ in which ministry can thrive, hurting people can heal, and lost souls can find the love of God. 

Unity is necessary among the children of God if we are going to know the flow of power...to see God do His wonders.
A. W. Tozer

Read-Thru-the-Bible
1 Samuel 18:1-20:42

March is Womens' History month--who is your favorite woman from history?

Irena Sendler

In May 2008, there was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena.  During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.  She had an "ulterior motive."  She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews (being German).  Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids).  She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.  The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.  She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely.  Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.  After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and reunite the family.  Most had been gassed.   Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

In the Fall of 2007 Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.  She was not selected.  Al Gore and the global warming kookburgers won---for a slide show on global warming.

Read more about Irena's life and heroism here:

http://www.auschwitz.dk/Sendler.htm

http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/sendler.htm

Is the 80/20 approach mere folly?

My favorite Statesman in the whole world--a great article on the 80/20 approach to politics favored by so many people.  Alan Keyes' blog Loyal to Liberty is a site any independent thinking person would want to bookmark or even add as an RSS feed.

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The folly of Steele's 80/20 approach

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Posted: February 26, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
© 2010 

I have argued that the 80/20 approach to candidate evaluation advocated by people like RNC Chairman Michael Steele defies logic and common sense. Put simply, it neglects the fact that some issues are more important to the survival of the nation and its liberty than others. The 80/20 approach tacitly adopts the unprincipled assumption that there are no established standards of judgment that have to be respected. This assumption is of course in line with the moral relativism that is characteristic of our time, especially among a lot of our educated elite.

In place of this flawed approach, I suggest something more consistent with the principled logic on which the United States was founded. That logic begins from the assumption that to be legitimate all governments must respect certain requirements of right, requirements built into human nature that therefore reflect the sovereign will of the Creator. People striving to act in accordance with those requirements are in the right and therefore literally have the right to be free from objection, interference or harm from others as they pursue their goal. This is the substance of the unalienable rights alluded to in the American Declaration of Independence, which sees the aim of securing these rights as the purpose for which governments are instituted. Because as individuals all have an equal claim to possess these rights, no one can rightly claim precedence over them. Therefore, neither superior force nor other incidental attributes give anyone a natural claim to rule others. The lawful exercise of government power derives only from an agreement amongst individuals as to the delegation of such power, a delegation necessarily limited by the terms of the agreement and its respect for the claim of rights that make such agreement (consent) the sine qua non of governmental legitimacy.

The legitimacy of the constitutional government of the United States is explicitly based on such an agreement. It was arrived at in principle when the original states of the Union articulated in common the principles of right that justified their assertion of independence from Great Britain. It was then more fully articulated in the form of the United States government, ordained and established by the unanimous consent of the people of the United States when they ratified the U.S. Constitution. The preservation of this form of government is the sworn duty of every official at every level of government in the United States. To carry out this duty the judgments and actions of every such official must be consistent with the terms of the agreement and with respect for the claim of rights that make it the sine qua non of governmental legitimacy. This logically gives rise to the first standard by which every official and every candidate for office must be judged, to wit, that in all their actions and all the positions they take or advocate they strive to preserve the Constitution of the United States and respect the claim of equal unalienable rights on which the lawfulness of its governmental powers depends.

Under a form of government that derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed (on account of their claim to equal unalienable rights) the people are the ultimate repository of sovereign power. Laws are made and carried out by their ministers or representatives, acting in their name and on their behalf. This logically gives rise to the second standard by which every official and every candidate for office must be judged, to wit, that in all their actions and all the positions they take or advocate they acknowledge and seek to preserve the sovereignty of the people of the United States.

But the people have the right claim to such sovereign power because they are all "created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." This is the principle of lawfulness. The authority of the people thus depends on the existence and authority of the Creator, God. This logically gives rise to the third standard by which every official and every candidate for office must be judge, to wit, that in all their actions and all the positions they take or advocate they do nothing that denies the existence and authority of the Creator, God.

Whether or not any given candidate measures up to these fundamental requirements will always be a matter of judgment. Such judgment must take account of the particular facts and circumstances in light of which it must be made. But clear neglect of the requirements is often easy to ascertain, whatever the facts and circumstances of the case. Therefore, as a general guide, it is probably more useful to encapsulate the indicators of egregious neglect or violation of the standards than to attempt to abridge the many nuances and degrees of imperfection in the observance of them. Nations must live with imperfection. But they cannot live with laws, policies and actions that neglect or violate the fundamental requirements of their existence. These constitute fatal flaws. Even if they appear in only one area of policy they are like drugs or poisons that prey upon a vital organ or function of the body. Candidates clearly committed to even one instance of such neglect or violation cannot be worthy of support, because their political success threatens the survival of the polity.

Since there are three areas of vital principle, there are three headings under which the neglect or violation of principle gives rise to fatal flaws: preserving the U.S. Constitution; preserving the sovereignty of the people; and preserving the principle of legitimacy that substantiates the people's right to self-government. Because it is possible to neglect or violate vital principle in the handling of any given issue, the concern for principle cuts across all the issues. Once we clearly understand this we realize that those who analyze candidates only in terms of their stands on "the issues" are (consciously or not) masking the division on principle that determines the fate of liberty.


In the next posting on my blog, "Introduction to the Principled Voters Guide," I will discuss more specifically the violations of principle now sadly rampant under each of the three headings. In the process we will see how "the issues" sort themselves out in terms of principle and how their stands on the issues divide candidates into two major parties: those who respect the vital prerequisites of liberty, and those who do not.

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For more from Alan Keyes visit http://loyaltoliberty.com. Once a high-level Reagan-era diplomat, Alan Keyes is a long-time leader in the conservative movement, well-known as a staunch pro-life champion and an eloquent advocate of the Constitutional Republic, including respect for the moral basis of liberty and self-government. He staunchly resists the destruction of the American people's sovereignty by fighting to secure our borders, abolish the federal income tax, end the insurrectionary practices of the federal Judiciary, and build a banking and financial system that halts elite looting of America's wealth and income. He formally severed his Republican Party affiliation in April of 2008 and has since then worked with America's Independent Party to build an effective vehicle for citizen-led grass-roots political action.