I have been praying in recent months, “Lord, teach me to number my days, that I might have a heart of wisdom.” During that time, I collapsed twice, once in public, turning mustard-colored and clocking a pulse of 34 beats per minute.

Yesterday a doctor phoned and taught me two new words — “ventricular trachycardia” — which put me in a weird zone all day. Suddenly there was an urgency to living — a need to make things right with a few people, an utter insipidness in worldly music and pastimes.

But it didn’t dawn on me till last night that this was all a direct answer to the aforementioned prayer.

I believe there is a problem with our praying, which God drolly illustrates in the incident in which Mark’s house church prays for Peter’s release from prison and then doesn’t believe he is at the door knocking (Acts 12).

Charles Finney tells of the days before his conversion: “On one occasion, when I was in one of the prayer meetings, some of the attendees asked if I wanted them to pray for me. I told them no, because I did not see that God answered their prayers.” Ouch.

“On further reading of my Bible, it struck me that their prayers were not answered because they did not comply with the conditions upon which God had promised to answer prayer. They did not pray in faith, in the sense of expecting God to give them the thing for which they asked.”

Elijah on Mt. Carmel bowed in strenuous prayer for God to send rain, and kept sending his servant to check the sky at intervals for signs of clouds. This is the kind of “watchful” (Colossians 4:2) prayer God wants.

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Here and there in my Bible I have written in the margin the initials D.A.P., a friend of mine whose memory the verse evokes. It is a remarkable thing when this happens — that a passage one has read numerous times, to no particular profit, is elucidated by the recollection of a person’s example.

Today it was 1 John 2:14: “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

I do not know if you have had the privilege of knowing someone who has “overcome the evil one” or someone who is genuinely “strong” in the Lord or in whom “the word of God lives.” If you have not, you may gloss over the verse as I have always done. It is easy enough to do because the mind has many subterfuges. We tell ourselves the meaning of the text is simply that we are Christians, pure and simple; we have overcome the evil one in the sense that we have been converted.

Blessed is the person to whom God sends living, breathing illustrations of His Word. I think we have had no idea of the power of a faithful life in the building up of the saints — and oppositely, of the harm done to our brothers and sisters when we fail to live a life in the power in which we were meant to live it. For some reason too deep for me to understand, God is pleased to more fully open our understanding of His Word when we see it fleshed out in another human being. There is much more afoot in hermeneutics than science.

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Just when I put my French fries down for carrot sticks, to keep from gaining weight, a new study says that my weight is less important than my overall fitness. The New York Times reports a story suggesting that your favorite offensive lineman, weighing 320 pounds, with his gut bursting from his jersey, is actually more fit than a skinny, unfit calorie counter who has exchanged over-priced specialty coffee for food.

Last week a report in The Archives of Internal Medicine compared weight and cardiovascular risk factors among a representative sample of more than 5,400 adults. The data suggest that half of overweight people and one-third of obese people are “metabolically healthy.” That means that despite their excess pounds, many overweight and obese adults have healthy levels of “good” cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose and other risks for heart disease.

At the same time, about one out of four slim people - those who fall into the “healthy” weight range - actually have at least two cardiovascular risk factors typically associated with obesity, the study showed.

So here’s the big secret: skinny does not always mean healthy. While it’s true that obesity is associated with many health problems like type-II diabetes, heart disease, and so on, “skinny” and “fit” are not synonyms.  The Times article reports a study by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute demonstrating that overweight people appear to have longer life expectancies than so-called “normal weight adults” as well.

In the end, it is possible to be both fit and a little chubby. When researchers conducted treadmill tests, overweight persons have much lower heart risk than people who are slim and unfit.

A person’s body mass index (B.M.I.) is actually a poor indicator of true health within a certain range. Among 2,600 adult 60-year-olds and older studied over a 12 year period, death rates among the overweight, those with a B.M.I. of 25 to 30, were slightly lower than in normal weight adults (normal B.M.I. ranges from 18.5 to 25). Once B.M.I. passed 35, death rates increased.

What does all this mean? First, while you’re watching football this fall, drinking a diet Coke and eating from the vegetable tray (without the ranch dressing), don’t feel sorry for the 300-pound center hiking the ball to the quarterback, even with his gut he may be more fit than you. Second, your non-exercising skinny friends who whine about not being able to gain weight are no better off. So, when you leave the gym this afternoon say “yes” to dessert after dinner guilt free!

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Maybe there was a time, in the mists of history, when an election was—or at least pretended to be—a search for truth about what was good for the nation. Tell me I’m not alone in my fascination with the following samples of typical modern political discourse:

“_____is in the tricky position of having to do many things at once. He needs to make clear he understands that people are hurting. He needs to offload blame. He needs to persuade voters that things can only get better — and that his opponents will only make things worse.”

“_____positioned himself as a friend of NAFTA in his Ottawa speech.”

“_____needs to be seen as credible on the world stage, and_____needs to be seen as somebody who knows the price of gas.”

“The ____party needs to be seen as the party of reform.”

“_____strategists worry that a weak economy will hurt ____in November.”

“It’s a win-win for_____if he can position himself as both a fiscal conservative (and spin it to be neocon-friendly using the Reagan riffs) and a maverick (appealing to…”

“_____needs to appeal to young voters….”

“_____must allure black voters….”

This is all about posturing, appealing, luring, and “being seen as.” There is not even the pretense anymore that it is not a game. The statements above are about as open an admission as one can imagine that a political campaign is all about aggrandizement of candidate or party. It is as if we all had a few drinks and ratified a new social contract in liquor: “Hey, I’ll stop pretending to have high moral principles if you stop pretending.” The fact that the rest of us now take this state of affairs in stride is testimony to the completeness of the crime. “Truth has perished” (Jeremiah 7:28).

Posted in Campaign 2008, Commentary, Front Page, The Nation | 10 Comments »

My African Violet was withered by the sun, and so badly that it looked dead, beyond resuscitation.

The sight of a plant this droopy and lifeless, its leaves curled in on itself, is a gruesome thing, especially if you have known the creature in better times, in its turgid, boastful purple and green days.

I got a whole new perspective on the condition, however, when I learned on NPR’s “You Bet Your Garden” that this shriveling and scoliosis of the stems is the plant’s natural emergency mechanism for saving itself. What looked to me like a resignation to death was in fact a heroic grasp for life. My brave little potted friend was struggling to conserve what little strength it had left, in hopes, perchance, of a late summer rain (since its negligent human caretaker had gone away for a week and left no surrogate).

My mind made the leap from herbs to men. One encounters people throughout one’s life who look like damaged goods. And no doubt they are. Droopy and lifeless, or curled in on themselves, they look gruesome and make the onlooker recoil and turn away.

The plant withered because it was trying to save itself. The unappealing person caved in with depression or addiction or surliness is trying to save himself too. The lesson from the African Violet—and a cardinal rule for understanding human behavior—is that no one does anything for no reason. You need to find the reason. And just knowing that there is one stirs my compassion.

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Emotion has always been a touchy subject in the church. Perhaps it’s because we have all been deceived by our emotions at one time or another—and we won’t be had again!

On the other hand, we have all been deceived by our intellect at one time or another too. Some of us remember the romantic philosophical escapades of the 60s flower children. Many of them went into banking afterwards. Hitting the brick wall of reality and the necessity of earning a living tends to cure both shallow emotionalism and shallow philosophicalism. As C.S. Lewis says, “five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were.”

Jesus died, I presume, to save us from both deceptions, the emotional and the intellectual kinds. He means to redeem and sanctify all the spare parts that are man, including emotion and intellect. Nevertheless, it is curious to see a residual suspicion of human emotions that is not seen with regard to human intellect. If one meets a person who is more joyful or enthusiastic about Jesus than he is, he keeps the “fanatic” at arm’s length.

I see contrary evidence in the Bible. The people of God ooze with emotion: “Tell of his works with songs of joy” (Psalm 107:22) “I will sing and make music with all my soul. Awake, harp and lyre!” (Psalm 108:1,2). Ah, that’s just cultic worship being described, you say. Fair enough, how about this one:

“My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long” (Psalm 71:8).

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You’ve heard of claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and xenophobia (and I’ll bet there is even a fear of blogs). But I would say our most prevalent fear is fear of bad news—forever bracing for the other shoe to drop.

The distinction of the righteous man, according to Psalm 112:7, is that he is “not afraid of bad news.” This is very good news.

The verse does not say the righteous man will have no bad news, only that he will have no fear of it. It’s the fear that eats us up, more than the bad news itself. Bad situations can be borne if taken one minute at a time.

Suffering is bad enough, but constant fear of the next suffering is what is unbearable. The unrighteous live in constant morbid suspense, even in good times (“The wicked flee when no one pursues” – Proverbs 28:1). The righteous live in constant peace, even in bad times (“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” – Psalm 23:5)

The desert is a given. Both the righteous and the unrighteous find themselves in it. But the righteous finds refreshment at every turn: “He will make it a place of springs” (Psalm 84:6). He will “drink from the brook by the way” (Psalm 110:7). The secret to this is divulged in the second half of the verse: “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord (Psalm 110:7).

I heard a serene woman say: “I used to think happy days were the calm before the storm. But I am learning to trust God.” Oh for courage to trust God’s love enough to stop fearing bad news—and to start living in sweet liberty.

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“They spoke against God, saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the desert?’ When he struck the rock, water gushed out, and streams flowed abundantly. But can he also give us food?” (Psalm 78:19,20).

The solution to stubborn unbelief is not miracles. There are never enough miracles; there is always another request. Another objection.

The rich man in hell pleaded with Abraham across the chasm in heaven to send an apparition to his brothers: “If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent” (Luke 16:30). Abraham replied, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

That seems ludicrous! Of course I would believe if someone appeared to me from the dead!

But would I really? One likes to think so. And certainly for the first hours, or days, one is completely convinced. But Father Abraham was a savvy psychologist. Life is a succession of moments, one moment succeeding another, one moment questioning the certainties of the previous moments. Certainty will fade over time like Moses’ shekinah shine behind the veil. (This is the weekend retreat syndrome, by the way—a mountaintop experience that sinks back to the doldrums.)

I have often asked God for miracles to prove his love. But nowadays I ask for spiritual eyes to see what He has already made clear.

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Why is Obama not leading significantly in the polls? The Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll  for Wednesday shows Barack Obama attracting 44 percent of the vote while John McCain holds at 42 percent. Obama is supported by 12 percent of Republicans while McCain earns the vote from 16 percent of Democrats. Is it possible that as Obama is pressured to roll out specifics about his vision for the country that he is even too liberal for most Democrats?

Jerome Corsi is doing his part to rain on Obama’s parade by exposing what many see as the leftist socialism of Sen. Obama in his book The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. The New York Times reports that the book will be number one on its best-sellers list on Sunday.

Corsi maintains that America is unfamiliar with the real Obama and if voters knew the truth they would not cast their vote for someone who may still have connections with Islam, never clarified when his experimentation with drugs in high school and college ever ceased, was dishonest, for example, about being present when Jeremiah Wright blamed “white arrogance” as the primary cause of suffering in the world, and so on.

The Corsi book is likely to raise even more questions about an Obama that most Democrats do not seem to know. The fact that Obama does not have a sizable lead in the polls, given his popularity, should be troublesome for Obama’s campaign. Understanding that polls are not always exhaustively reliable, it is at least a signal that Obama’s popularity is waning as more information is revealed about him.

Stuart Shepard, of Focus On The Family, took some flak for a video asking, “Would it be wrong to ask people to pray for rain?” during Obama’s acceptance speech for his party’s nomination. Shepard asks for torrential rain to start “two minutes before the acceptance speech begins.”

“I’m still pro-life, and I’m still in favour of marriage as being between one man and one woman,” Shepard says on the video. “I would like the next president who will select justices for the next Supreme Court to agree.”

Focus on the Family withdrew the video after receiving complaints, saying it was meant to be hyperbolic and humorous. Shepard’s prayer request for rain may be unnecessary as more and more Democrats lose enthusiasm about Obama as we approach election day.

Posted in Campaign 2008, Commentary, Front Page, The Nation | 230 Comments »

“Flirtation” is such a precious word. It almost seems to have petticoats and frills.

But flirtation is treachery. The person who is flirting is setting a trap. Her goal is to get you to desire her, and to be miserable in your desire. She holds out golden apples in silver settings, but you cannot have them.

I’m writing this post because a married man I know saw a small photo of a flirtatious woman that accompanied an article in a magazine (a Christian magazine, no less), and he was awake all night thinking about her. In other words, this was not even a direct hit — demonstrating the power of flirtation even once removed.

For my money, the best defense against a flirt is to see it through God’s eyes:

“…She appeared to be contorting her all but invisible face and writhing her smokelike body in a quite meaningless fashion. At last I came to the conclusion—incredible as it seemed—that she supposed herself still capable of attracting them and was trying to do so. She was a thing that had become incapable of conceiving conversation save as a means to that end. If a corpse already liquid with decay had arisen from the coffin, smeared its gums with lipstick, and attempted a flirtation, the result could not have been more appalling. In the end she muttered ‘Stupid creatures,’ and turned back to the bus” (C.S.Lewis, The Great Divorce).

And the best defense against becoming a flirt, based on 1 Timothy 5:1, is to treat men your age like brothers and younger men like sons.

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