[GCFL-discuss] Evangelical Covenant

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Jeanene, your pastor sounds good to me. Predestination is non-Biblical
gobbledegook, and I was raised Presbyterian, a church originally
considered THE Calvinist denomination in the English speaking world.
(Presently I'm local church historian at Judah Temple AME Zion, but
living some distance away now, so I divide my time between a pentecostal
and a WELS Lutheran church, although I could never join the latter -- a
friend invited me and I like the people there.) C.S. Lewis laid that
predestination nonsense to rest, in The Screwtape Letters, when he noted
that God does not LOOK INTO the future to see what is GOING to happen. To
God, it is all one unbounded NOW, as God is not bound by time. God sees
the entirety of human history AS it is happening; to watch a man choose
to do a thing is not the same thing as making him do it. The sovereignty
of God is not in the least threatened by the free will of man, how could
it be? He is God, man is merely man, a created being. I think free will
is best understood by imagining a fifteen year old building a hundred
robots, and programming them to march around the house loudly chanting
"Bert is Great, Bert is Great" (or whatever the fifteen year old's name
may be). Would that do anything for the creator's self esteem? No, he
would have to program the robots with free will for their praise to mean
anything.

I admire your approach to being pro-life. It is exactly what anyone who
is pro-life should do to put their beliefs into practice. If every
individual who talks pro-life and votes pro-life would simply adopt all
the unwanted children they could handle, we wouldn't have a political
debate anymore. The world-wide capacity for really nurturing all these
children would be fully absorbed, and nobody would have time to coerce
anyone else. (Some of the more disappointing experiences, such as yours,
might inspire second thoughts about the wisdom of REQUIRING every
pregnant woman to bring EVERY fetus to term and into the world, however
damaged.) 

I am firmly pro-choice, but then, I've never needed an abortion, and, I
love children too. I spend as much time helping overworked parents with
the ones they already have as I can. I don't think I would take on
raising a child unless I were married -- too much for one person and not
entirely fair to the child, although millions make it somehow. On the
other hand, I have a daydream that someone leaves a newborn baby in a
basket in the front hallway of the apartment building I live in, and I
find it before the manager sees it and calls the police. I already know
the legal procedure for keeping it, obtaining an alternate birth
certificate, and keeping the social workers out of the picture. But I
would have to get a bigger place -- one with a separate bedroom and I'll
sleep in the living room. Or even a house where I could plant hollyhocks
and nasturtiums.

Clinton? I think I also read that Obama got more delegates, just as, in
Iowa, Edwards came in 2nd but Clinton got more delegates than Edwards. I
would like to see Edwards and/or Obama first and/or second in every
primary, and Clinton third. But she is bound to win a few. Strangely, I
can find headlines about McCain winning South Carolina, but not about who
won the Democratic primary.

What we really need is a new party, with a platform consisting of
everything that all members of this discussion group can reach consensus
on. Anything we all agree to is worthy of being written into law.
Anything we disagree about, the government should keep its nose out of.
It doesn't have to be this group; there are similar odd combinations of
people I would make the same statement about. Me, the young man who plays
the keyboard at church, the devoted George Bush voter he worked with for
several years, and the orthodox rabbi who also worked for the same
company, could fill the same purpose.

Siarlys
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