Inviting All to Come and See (AUDIO)

Here.

How Christmas Looks from Heaven (Audio)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Light Has Pierced Our Darkness (AUDIO)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Should Americans be making more babies?

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues that they should be. While it's good that teens are having fewer babies, he argues:

It used to be taken for granted that the best indicator of a nation's health was its citizens' desire and capacity to reproduce. And it should still seem self-evident that people's willingness to have children is not only a sign of confidence in the future, but a sign of cultural health. It's a signal that people are willing to commit to the most enduring responsibility on Earth, which is raising a child.

But reproduction is also a sign of national health in a more dollars-and-cents way. The more productive people you have in your society, the healthier your country's economy. It's an idea that was obvious back in the 17th century, when economist Jean Bodin wrote "the only wealth is people."

This is still fairly clear, I think. Despite the menacing moves of authoritarian Russia and communist China toward exercising regional hegemony (or more), both countries are severely limited in their aspirations by their birth rate trends. Russia is already aged and in crisis, China will almost inevitably be in such crisis soon.

That doesn't mean that married couples should have more kids so that we can forestall the Russians and the Chinese, though both of those nations, at present, pose a far greater existential threat to the peace and security of the United States than do Islamist terrorists.

I would argue that our reticence about having more kids in this country is rooted less in concern about the environment, a fear fostered Paul Erhlich's absurdly overwrought book, The Population Bomb, back in the the late-60s and 70s--a fear that many in my generation, fearful of having less, bought into, than it is in materialism and selfishness.

We had two children who I love dearly, but I wish that we'd had more. There's simply nothing like family living and being a dad is, for me, not only one of the biggest challenges in the world, but also one of its greatest pleasures. There's something beautiful and humbling about pouring yourself into your children and watching them grow up to be wonderful in spite of your parenting.

According to Gobry, there are practical reasons why the United States should be concerned about its low birth rate, "59.6 births per 1000 women," the lowest rate in US history:

Today we see the problems wrought by the decline in productive populations all over the industrialized world, where polities are ripping each other to shreds over how to pay for various forms of entitlements, especially for old people. The debates play out in different ways in different countries, but in other ways they are exactly the same. That's because they are ruled by the same ruthless math: The fewer young, productive people you have to pay for entitlements for old, unproductive people, the steeper the bill for the entire society becomes. This basic problem is strangling Europe's economies. And while the United States is among the least bad of the bunch, it is still headed in the wrong direction.

While acknowledging that evidence for the effectiveness of government programs to encourage people to have kids is mixed, Gobry points out "the fact of the matter is that in contemporary America, 40 percent of women have fewer children than they want to."

Gobry suggests several ways government could entice husbands and wives to have more kids. But for me, the most compelling reason for bigger families is spiritual. The Bible teaches that it's more blessed to give than to receive. Apart from the fact that a nation with fewer children leads to scarcity, fewer opportunities, less productivity, and economic and military weakness, couples who have the wherewithal to raise families--and far more do than they think they do, learn the blessedness of giving to themselves to their kids, not indulgently, but with love that includes loving discipline, time, and personal investment. A parent learns that life isn't about what you keep, harbor, husband, or get for yourself, it's about what you give away.

Parents have a sacred and fulfilling two-fold responsibility. First, they are to prepare their own children for adulthood, nurturing them with the two sides of the coin of love: gracious love and gracious discipline. Second, they are to "make disciples," teaching their children to know the God we meet in Jesus Christ so that they can become not only their children, but God's children as well.

Parenting is a daunting thing. But God has also engineered it to be one of the greatest blessings a human being could ever experience. And, for those who seek to follow Christ, parenting can be a tremendous calling in which to learn love, humility, selflessness, and a right relationship with money and possessions, among other things.

OK, husbands and wives of child-bearing age, don't replicate the mistake of my own self-centered Baby Boomer generation, get busy and make babies.*

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

*By the way, it has always struck me as absurd that people my age can get "senior discounts," something utterly unnecessary for most of us, while young couples with kids and mortgages have to pay full price. It ought to be the other way around, shouldn't it?

Hello, Russia...and the rest of the world

It's a funny thing. Millions don't read this blog.

But whenever I check to see where people live who do read it--and, by the way, I can only check on readers' countries, nothing about specific readers or the towns in which they live--the overwhelming majority are from the United States.

Russian readership is usually in a distant second place. Why that is, I have no idea.

But this week presents an even bigger mystery. Look at this screen shot of the most recent report on the countries from which people are reading this blog.

Hello, Russia...and hello too, to the USA, as well as to the Netherlands, Germany, Latvia, the Falklands (or the Malvinas, if you're an Argentinian), Luxembourg, China, the United Kingdom, and Ireland! It mystifies me how the biggest chunk of readers this week is from Russia. But you're welcome to read away!

To all who read the blog, next time you stop by, leave a comment. Tell me how you found the blog and what drew you here. I would be interested in knowing those tidbits.

Я буду видеть Вас здесь в ближайшее время .

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

A moving video...

...showing Chinese Christians receiving their own Bibles for the first time. This was originally posted two years ago.

Saturday This and That

These are things that caught my eye this past week.

Fast food changes...
...here.

Anne Meara has died...
...and this New York Times obituary gives surprising facts about a woman who I've always associated with comedy. But she did a lot more.

As if Nepal's people aren't suffering enough...
...sex traffickers, often posing as relief workers, are exploiting the country's girls. No punishment a court might give would be harsh enough.

How is it that wonderful people are so often attracted to nasty people...
...of the opposite sex? A researcher claims to have found the answer. (It's plausible.)

Esther and Purim...
...was part of this week's readings for our congregation's Journey Through the Bible. This is a good article on Purim. Esther is a real hero of Biblical faith. Like Joseph, God used her to bring deliverance to His people.

Probably the most creative use of a baseball rain delay ever...
...and it will crack you up. What's even funnier about it is that players from both teams got in on the fun.

Is the Chinese government underestimating the United States?...
...This very good and short article regarding the current face-off in the South China Sea suggests that it is.

An eerie gallery...
...the last known photographs of 49 famous people. Amy Winehouse looks to be in the prime of life. Jim Hendrix, Freddie Mercury, and Steve Jobs all look vulnerable. You find yourself wanting to tell James Dean, "Don't climb into the car." None of us knows the day or moment of our demise. For all our pretenses to the contrary, we are never really in control.

How Luther showed that Christ is in the Old Testament...
...to Donovan Riley. This is one of the best short pieces on this subject I have ever read. It mirrors my own experience of reading and studying the Old Testament, as mentored by Luther's writings. This is the one article you should be sure to read of all linked here.

It's a joy to watch for the athleticism it required...
...but this catch probably cost him a shot at becoming baseball's all-time home run king. Ken Griffey, Jr. was one of my favorite players. And unlike many of his contemporaries, there has never been a hint that Griffey, whose swing was the purest and most beautiful I have ever seen, took Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). Every hit legit! And he was an amazing defending outfielder, deserving of mention in the same breath with Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle.

What the Newest Zogby Poll Could Say

Yesterday over on Facebook, Ohio's outgoing Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, posted a link to a new Zogby Poll. Brunner, a progressive Democrat, understandably highlighted Zogby's finding that, in spite of the "shellacking" that Democrats took in the 2010 midterm elections a few weeks ago, voter majorities still favor government spending on infrastructure in order to create jobs. (That's what Zogby highlighted, too.) It's true, the majorities for such spending are still there.

But in looking at the poll results, something else became apparent.

This data, for the most part, indicates an overall moderation of views among Americans. The big red flag for those working in state governments across the country is the opposition to any help for states in balancing their budgets. Here in Ohio, of course, we face the prospect of an $8-billion shortfall. In California, the number is $52-billion.

The coming year may turn out to be the most challenging one for the country since World War Two. This makes the polarization offered up by the two parties even a greater problem than it has been; it will make it tougher to reach the compromises needed to go forward, I think.

Is there any chance that the two parties that both love to spend and give away money like drunken sailors (to their favorite special interest groups), will finally incite a moderate revolution? Or will the partisan kabuki dance continue until the American future is utterly mortgaged to the Chinese government and its allies, clients, and subjects? 


Right now, we have a very polarized electorate whose main question seems to be, "What's in it for me?" (And who nonetheless claim, if the exit polls are any indication, want the parties to work together in Washington.) That isn't a very promising political landscape. 


Praying, for those so inclined, like me, seems more than appropriate.

Just My Opinion: Watch Out for the Beijing Regime

Charles Krauthammer is no fan of President Obama, but he had no use for the silly (and largely misinformed) carping over the cost of the president's recent trip to Asia. I agree with Krauthammer. It's important for Presidents of the United States to go abroad for these diplomatic missions. The president is America's diplomat-in-chief. When presidents take such trips, it is in everybody's interest that he be kept safe and protected.

More substantively, I emphatically agree with Krauthammer on the wisdom of Obama's special overtures to India. The US and India, along with the rest of the world really, has an abiding interest in these two countries having strong relations. That abiding interest is the Chinese government, an enemy to its own people's freedom and an enemy to the peace and stability of the world. A partnership between India and the US is essential for strengthening democracy, for checking China's growing military power, and for preventing the world from being sucked into China's economic vortex, with permanent trade imbalances and endemic loss of employment opportunities. (That's why the President was right to say that the greatest object of his diplomatic mission was "jobs." That's really at stake right now in this era of unscrupulous business, environmental, economic, and human rights practices on the part of the Chinese government, practices that, along with the West's undisciplined spending and use of credit, is slowly turning the world into a playground for the Butchers of Beijing.)

President Obama's endorsement of India's desire to become a member of the Security Council of the United Nations is sensible for both the US and India. The council is reserved for those nations that are deemed major powers. As Obama pointed out in India that with major power status comes major power responsibilities. (And I would say, major power expectations.) India was not a major power after World War II when the UN was established. But it is now. That needs to be acknowledged.

Krauthammer explains very well why Presdent Obama's trip to India was so important for the US and the world:

[China's] hegemony is the growing source of tension in Asia today. Modern China is the Germany of a century ago - a rising, expanding, have-not power seeking its place in the sun. The story of the first half of the 20th century was Europe's attempt to manage Germany's rise. We know how that turned out. The story of the next half-century will be how Asia accommodates and/or contains China's expansion.

Nor is this some far-off concern. China's aggressive territorial claims on resource-rich waters claimed by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan are already roiling the neighborhood. Traditionally, Japan has been the major regional counterbalance. But an aging, shrinking Japan can no longer sustain that role. Symbolic of the dramatic shift in power balance between once-poor China and once-dominant Japan was the resolution of their recent maritime crisis. Japan had detained a Chinese captain in a territorial-waters dispute. China imposed a rare-earth mineral embargo. Japan capitulated.

That makes the traditional U.S. role as offshore balancer all the more important. China's neighbors from South Korea all the way around to India are in need of U.S. support of their own efforts at resisting Chinese dominion.

And of all these countries, India, which has fought a border war with China, is the most natural anchor for such a U.S. partnership. It's not just our inherent affinities - democratic, English-speaking, free-market, dedicated to the rule of law. It is also the coincidence of our strategic imperatives: We both face the common threat of radical Islam and the more long-term challenge of a rising China. 

Mind you, all of this is just my opinion (and Krauthammer's). I'm still just a preacher and I'm not foisting a social statement on anybody. These views haven't been brought from Mount Sinai. But I nonetheless think the world would do well to watch out for the regime in Beijing.

The Chinese Lunar New Year and the Great Heavenly Reunion

See here.

Also here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Federal Budget Deficits: Our Ticking Time Bomb

The seriousness of the ongoing saga of US federal budget deficits is the topic of two interesting recent articles.

First, this from The New York Times.

Then, this from the BBC. My son, a seminary student with undergraduate degrees in History and Philosophy, linked to it over on Facebook. It elicited the following moderate, non-partisan rant from me.* (By the way, the Walker book to which I refer is Comeback America: Turning the Country Around and Restoring Fiscal Responsibility by David Walker.):

This is a good overview of the problem. I'm looking forward to reading the David Walker book.

Once unemployment comes down, it's going to be imperative that the deficits be addressed. But I'm not convinced that either party will do so. There are so many constituent groups--special interest groups, state, district, and regional groups--that want to eliminate pork and waste except when it impacts them, it makes eliminating the federal red ink tough.

Then, there are the sacred cows like Social Security and Medicare and the Defense Department, leaving little in actual "discretionary spending" to be cut.

The template for resolving these problems is an independent commission. It was done with Social Security back in the Reagan years, as I recall. It was also done with military base closings. Congress decides it can't deal with an issue because it neither has the will, the capacity to compromise, nor the willingness to give up on earmarks individual members want to bring back to their states or districts. So, it appoints a commission, outsourcing the appropriations function the Constitution gives it; all they have to do is vote up and down on recommendations.

But just last week, the Senate couldn't even agree to legislation authorizing a deficit reduction commission. Obama says he's going to appoint one by executive order. But it won't have any force of law.

It's a mess and both parties are to blame. Let's pray that God will give our leaders the wisdom they need. The stakes are enormous. These deficits mean that we're mortgaging the country's future to the Chinese government. Pols from both parties give lip service to doing something about it. But I don't see much substantive work happening.

Is anyone else as concerned as I am?

One other thing. Does anybody remember this? I personally think that Osama bin Laden takes entirely too much credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union. But when government spending reaches sustained high percentages of national GDP, it's not a good thing. Much of the war on terrorism has been financed by borrowing from the Chinese government, a regime which, because it is less than respectful of its own people, can hardly be expected to be forgiving of the US if we're unable to pay our bills.

Can't some of the river of red ink in Washington be attributed to our being terrified the terrorists?

Would any of our spending over the past eight-plus years have been significantly different if we weren't terrified?

How might we deal with terrorist threats and not spend ourselves into bankruptcy or slavery to the Chinese government?

*I'm certain that "a moderate, non-partisan rant" is not an oxymoronic phrase.

[This post is an example of JUMP, a category I created several years ago to designate pieces that are "just my opinion." This isn't Mark the Pastor writing, just Mark the Big Mouth.]

The Petulance of the Beijing Regime

The repressive regime in Beijing doesn't want Australians to learn more about their despotism.

Are the US and China Headed for Eventual War?

That would be insane!

But, I agree with Niall Ferguson that the two countries are, inevitably, headed for a divorce, the end of what he once called "Chimerica."

Having said that, China's government clearly seems to be moving toward what Ferguson calls "empire building," which could be detrimental to regional stability, the environment, and US interests.

For the future, the US government needs, among other things, to:

• Decrease its debt to China.
• Deepen or form strategic partnerships with Asian nations as a means buffering China's hegemonic designs in Asia.
• Wean itself off of oil, for which China is likely to become an increasingly aggressive competitor.
• Encourage Americans to save more and mortgage less of their financial well-being to the Chinese.

Chinese Government Upset

Wah! Maybe if the Beijing regime didn't oppress people, they could, as they put it in their warning to Japan, focus "on important issues," like freedom for their people, an end to religious and other forms of persecution, and bullying others economically.

Freedom of Religion in China

Here.

China's Growing Importance in Latin America

Here.

Click on the Label below to put this linked piece in context.

Mr. Obama Goes to Moscow, Where the Real Story is Beijing and Tehran

While the Vice President put his foot in his mouth (twice) and his seasoned political pro, Rahm Emanuel, did the same, President Obama was acomplishing quite a lot during his trip to Russia. The BBC reports:

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have reached an outline agreement to cut back their nations' stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

The "joint understanding" signed in Moscow would see reductions of deployed nuclear warheads to below 1,700 each within seven years of a new treaty.

The accord would replace the 1991 Start I treaty, which expires in December.

Mr Obama said the two countries were both "committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past".

Separately, Russia also agreed to allow the US military to fly troops and weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, allowing it to avoid using supply routes through Pakistan that are attacked by militants.

These are huge agreements, which also bring huge benefits to US interests.

More broadly speaking, they also may help to lay a foundation for Russia, the US, and India in forming an informal hedge against the Chinese regime in Beijing and Islamic Republic's government in Tehran, each of which appears intent not only on oppressing their own peoples, but also on extending their powers regionally and globally.

One lesson of history is that oppressive regimes with designs on regional or global hegemony need to be checked by other nations cooperatively. In recent weeks, both Tehran and Beijing governments have provided more evidence of their malevolent intentions and of their need to be checke. Better to thwart them now peacefully through temporary, realist alliances, than to face major conflicts with them later.

One might also hope that Russian accords signal an intention on the Obama Administration's part to curb Chinese investment in US bonds, already at an alarming level.

The trip to Russia, I believe, was less about Russia, than it was about China, and certainly about nailing al Qaeda in the mountainous areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's interesting that the Russians are cooperating and hard not to speculate on what sorts of concessions were exacted from the US side,

Obama appears intent to follow a foreign policy realist's approach, a departure both from recent Democratic orthodoxy and from the Wilsonian adventurism of his immediate predecessor, Republican President, George W. Bush.

Chinese Astronaut Willingly Goes Into Space

This is funny.

Creative Cartography

The Chinese government has submitted its claimed maritime boundaries in the South China Sea. Its proposals give credence to notions that the Beijing regime intends to exercise unquestioned hegemony in Asia, at the expense of neighboring nations. Read the BBC news article on their proposals here or, cut to the chase, and look at their proposed boundaries on a map.

I've been writing with considerable concern about the threat to international peace and stability represented by the Chinese government. See here. Go here for a rundown of recent writing about the Chinese government' human rights policies and its aggressive military and economic impulses toward the outer world.

Civil Rights Attorney Held Still Being Held by Chinese Government

Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese civil rights attorney and a Christian who has been subjected to torture before, has been a hostage ever since being taken by the Chinese government's secret police in early February. Read more of his story and sign a petition demanding his release here.

[More on the general threat to peace and human rights posed by the oppressive Chinese government, written during last year's presidential campaign, here.]