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Life,

 

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Wade

Response to “Why Evangelicals Should Oppose Trump and Vote Democrat”

Response to “Why Evangelicals Should Oppose Trump and Vote Democrat,” an article by Robb Ryerse dated January 31, 2020, by Wade Rutland Howell Jr. Ph. D.

In this sort article Robb Ryerse claims that Republicans, and more specifically Evangelical Christians, should abandon their party and support democrats to defeat President Trump. The article itself is short and I encourage anyone who has not read it to do so. There is no heavy lifting to be done, it is simply an appeal to elect Democrats over Republicans because Trump is the devil. I am only partially joking with that summary.

As best I can determine Mr. Ryerse provides about six reasons for Evangelicals to redirect support from Trump and Republicans this year. He also notes he only needs about five percent of Evangelicals to ensure Trump does not win. By the way, he also notes that he works with a group called Vote Common Good against Republicans. I also visited this group’s website and read what they are about. The group seems to think Democrats don’t know how to speak to religious people effectively and desire to have religious people agree that they should vote for the common good, rather than their own self interests. What the common good is, however, is not explicitly stated. So, while the website does not tell us what the common good is, it does tell us that voting for democrats is how we get it. It is interesting that Mr. Ryerse argues people should not blindly support Trump and Republicans but should vote for “common good” which means voting for Democrats, apparently without regard for who the candidate is, or as others might call this, to vote blindly for Democrats. My Ryerse himself, in his article, defines the common good as “getting Trump and his enablers out of office.”

What about those six reasons to redirect support away from Trump. I will list them and address them now. First, Trump does not believe what Evangelicals believe (about abortion) and only supports it publicly so that Evangelicals will vote for him. I am not sure why this is a problem. Voters may prefer someone who believes as they do on issues (I certainly would). The next best situation would be to have someone who will promote policy that aligns with issues of the voters even though they might not agree with it personally (what Mr. Ryerse accuses Trump of this). It would be much worse have someone who promotes policies contrary to the voter’s ideals, whether they say they agree with you or not. Trump’s inner convictions about abortion (for or against) are greatly overshadowed by the public actions he has taken. If, as Evangelicals, we believe that the common good includes (at least in part) opposition to acceptance or normalization of abortion, then I fail to find Mr. Ryerse’s reason to redirect support from Trump to a Democrat convincing. Especially since Democratic candidates actively seek to promote the acceptance and normalization of abortion.

Second, the common good is advanced by defeating Trump and Republicans. I suppose this claim must be self evident, because Mr. Ryerse simply asserts this claim without argument. I suppose I must be blinded to the clear evidence of Trump’s malice and the Republicans who are falling all over themselves to do whatever the president wants. Mr. Ryerse asserts that the President has disdain for decency, disrespect toward right and wrong, and disregard for the vulnerable (his alliteration shows his Seminary Training is paying off). Unfortunately, Mr. Ryerse did not provide me with examples detailing the issues, so I will have to await this clear evidence to show up so I can evaluate it. I could just take him at his word, he is a Pastor after all. The only problem with that is that I am also a Pastor and have been serving in Churches for almost twenty years. I am afraid I will have to wait for Mr. Ryerse or others to provide evidence and argument that will show me that my own assessment of the public record is in need of amendment.

Third, supporting President Trump because of his position on abortion is a deal with the devil. Evidence offered for this position is that Evangelical support of Refugee resettlement programs has shifted among Evangelicals and he ties this to allegiance to The President. The question we have to ask about Evangelical support for Refugee resettlement is why the shift. Mr. Ryerse infers the reason as related to supporting the president. Could it be that greater examination of the program has caused people to reevaluate their positions? If so, that would be similar to what Mr. Ryerse is asking Republicans to do. I do not know why Evangelical support for a particular program has shifted, or even that it has shifted, but I am confident it is not because Evangelicals  were told to change their position of the President will no longer hold to a pro-life public policy. If it was, I never got the memo.

Forth, a procedural vote in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump against calling witnesses is the exaltation of the Executive branch over the Legislative branch. Here we have our first argument. Mr. Ryerse claims the following: either Republican Senators vote to allow witnesses or they abandon their responsibility as a co-equal branch of government. It is nice to read an argument on page five of six of my printout of Mr. Ryerse’s article. Unfortunately, this argument, which is presented as a constructive dilemma, turns out to be a false dilemma. A third alternative to the motivation for the vote of Republican Senators is that they believed that the impeachment charges, even if true, were not sufficient to remove a president. Maybe they thought what Trump was accused of was not wrong, or that the entire impeachment from the house was only political, or that what President Trump did was wrong but did not rise to the level of impeachment (think back to the Clinton impeachment), or that there may have been something there but that the House of Representatives should have done a more thorough job with fact finding before sending the articles to the Senate. I just provided four other possible reasons (I am sure there are many more also) which makes Mr. Ryerse’s (with only two choices) dilemma a false one.

Fifth, Evangelical support to President Trump is blind and abandons previously held values. Instead of another argument, with this point we only get another assertion. But we can ask the question, do Evangelicals support the President blindly? I don’t think so. Do they support him robustly? Yes, I think they do. Do Evangelicals think the President can do no wrong? No, certainly not. As an Evangelical, a Pastor, a Philosopher and Theologian, I believe the president is no moral exemplar, but he was far better (on the whole) than the alternative in 2016. I suspect that he will be far better than the 2020 alternative also.

Sixth, Republicans should vote for the Democrats (just this one time) for the greater good. Here we get a final argument. Mr. Ryerse writes Republicans should support Democrat candidates this election “Because a deal with the Democrats is better than a deal with the devil.” I actually agree that a deal with the Democrats would be better than a deal with the devil. I disagree that Trump is the devil. In this final sentence of the article Mr. Ryerse steps into the open and states outright what the tone of the article hinted. Mr. Ryerse does not view the President and the members of the Republican party as good faith actors who disagree with him. He sees them as enemies of the good. While this can be an effective rhetorical tactic, it commits another logical fallacy. It is an ad hominem attack. Here we see that Mr. Ryerse thinks to highly (or lowly) of the President. President Trump is a man, not a demon or supernatural entity of evil. He is a fallen human, who needs salvation only found in Jesus Christ, just like every other human.

A vote to re-elect President Trump is not a vote for Satan. Votes for Republican candidates in other races are not votes for the hordes of hell. Likewise, votes for the Democratic candidates are not votes for Satan and the hordes of hell either. This is not to say that the votes are not consequential, because they are.

I believe that the Democrats believe that what they support is good for our country. I do not question their patriotism. I simply cannot understand how they could possibly think what they are proposing would be good for the USA, Americans, or the world. I can, however, see how the agenda pushed by Democrats candidates is good for Democrat candidates.

I suppose Mr. Ryerse would simply see me as a blind follower of President Trump. Just another Evangelical who can’t see past myself to the “greater good” which he has such a great apprehension of. Maybe that is it. Maybe my instance on logic, argument, evidence, and public policies that do not further consolidate power in the hands of the few means I can’t see this greater good he is pointing to. Maybe if he is so inclined, he can spit in some clay and rub it in my eyes like Jesus did in John 9:6, then maybe I will be able see truth of his words. Till then, I guess I will just go on until I can be healed of my blindness.

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Thoughts on Star Wars Episode VII

As some of you may know, I was not excited about Disney's New Pop-Star Wars. There has been a lot of hype and some people are going quite batty over it, so I have held my comments close. I very rarely go to the movies and I expected to see it some time later after it was out of theaters. Two things to keep in mind as you read this. 1) The Star Trek franchise is far superior to the Star Wars franchise. 2) I am in the minority that think episodes 1, 2, and 3 of Star Wars are much better than episodes 4, 5, and 6.

I fully realize that my position puts me in danger of never being allowed to join 501^st Legion (Vader's Legion) 

and the Jedi Academy of North Florida won't allow me to be trained (much cynicism in me, they sense). All that is fine. I must speak (or rather type) the truth, and if that truth is painful, well then, suck it up buttercup.

I went to see Disney's new cinematic marketing experiment with very low expectations, somewhere between Hanna Montana and The Suite Life on Deck.
So the movie exceeded my expectations, but only barely.





First of all, the Star Wars universe needs an infusion of new ideas. Come on, really another Death Star, but this time it will be a lot bigger. This time it is a planet that way it would take a death star to destroy the new Super Planetary Star Eating Death Star (SPSEDS).
I know people are fixated on size, but give me a break.

One Direction Logo

First Order Logo

Once again the military industrial complex (First Order this time...what an awful name, I could not help thinking One Direction every time they said First Order) is looking for a small cute droid on a desert planet because it has information that could be dangerous in the hands of the Rebels

(sorry Resistance). The droid ends up with someone who does not know they can use the force and this person decides to help get the droid back to those who need it. (This plot line is completely different from a droid taking a message from Princess Leia to an old man in robes on a desert planet, because this is an old man in robes on a desert planet trying to get a message to Princess/General Leia....totally different.)

Also the droid and the new
force wielder end up leaving the desert planet on the Millennium Falcon while being hunted by the military industrial complex.

So this was not at all like episode IV, I mean in episode IV Han Solo and Chewbacca pilot the Falcon....in VII it takes five or six minutes in space before Han and Chewy show up, to pilot the ship “that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.”Also there is some stuff about dangerous mouths with tenticles and Han going back into smuggling since there did not seem to be a future in rebelling after the take down of Death Star 2.

We do see a new element in VII, a Storm Trooper with a conscience. Not sure how smart taking a Rebel Pilot (sorry Resistance) to fly a TIE fighter to freedom is. And by the way, that must have been the strongest coupling in the history of the universe to hold the TIE fighter there long enough to blow up stuff in the hanger bay which was totally different from the way Anikin did in the Phantom Menace.

We also have a new pair of Siths. The wannabe Vader 2.0 has a new blaster pause ability which lasts about 300 seconds, a shiny new red light saber with a cross-guard on the hilt (for protection and to inflict shoulder damage to novice ex-storm trooper saber wielders). He also is a collector of Star Wars memorabilia as he has the burned out Darth Vader helmet and geeks out over seeing the Collector's Edition Anikin Skywalker/Darth Vader light saber. We find out he is the love child of Han Solo and Leia, who turned against his uncle (destroying Luke dreams of tuition free Jedi prep academy and causing Luke to run away). When he finally takes of his mask, we see the dark side of the Wonder Years.

The dark side, which as we all know has been touting the cookies it has for some time, apparently also has more acne. So about 1/3 of the way into the movie we have Emo Solo and One Direction hunting for the droid with the schematics to the Death Star (sorry, map to Luke Skywalker) and we get a Cantina scene!! YES!! Finally...I mean in IV they left the cantina and got on the Falcon and now they fly on the Falcon to a Cantina..Totally Different.

The Cantina is run by none other than Edna Mode...(AKA Maz Kanata). In the cantina we get our Disney star appearance by Miley Cyrus

who climbs off an ogre (talk about type cast) to call One Direction. One Direction shows up, lead by Emo Solo on his giant flying Manta Ray to blow up the establishment of ill repute. Meanwhile, Fin and Rey (apparently names with more than one syllable are unfashionable) are splitting up and Rey starts to run away from her destiny only to get captured by Emo and flown away.

In this movie, however, the Rebels.....(Resistance) fights back and the much awaited X-Wing fighters who chase away the bad people. Who shows up on the scene but Princess, or General, Leia who is committed to eating better and no longer carries her cinnamon buns with her on set.

But now, filled with confidence and rage, One Direction unleashes the SPSEDS ultimate weapon that fires a faster than light weapon (that you can still see on its way to kill you...meh...not sure how to explain that..) and that fires with a width of less than a planet (since that is what it is coming out of) and then is wide enough and bright enough to be seen from several star systems away and which the light traveling out from it would have to travel faster than light, so that everyone can see it....ouch...but which condenses back to less than planet size before splitting up and becoming an intergalactic shotgun blast which blows holes in the planets and the plot at the same time.) BUT IT WAS A BIG EXPLOSION. BOOM. To top that people would have to blow up a star, oh....wait, Star Trek already did that.

Now that the Senate is out of the way....which, by the way, who is funding these guys...The Empire funded the Imperial Army, which would have become the Republic's army again after Palpatine's death. How do we still have either the remnant of the Imperial Army re-branded and hostile to the Senate and have a Rebellion (sorry, Resistance) that is not the Republic's army...Is there no army for the Republic and the Senate? Do we really have just two rogue factions with the Senate in the middle? How do you fund planet sized super weapons without a stable tax base and a strong, growing middle class? Seems fishy.

But, now the real challenge. How to you destroy the SPSEDS before it can eat a star and recharge and blow you up? And this time they fixed all the flaws of the previous Death Stars. You can't blow up the shield generators on the planet, because the planet is the Death Star. They already eradicated the Ewoks so you can't get stone age technology to beat back the defenses. They built buildings over the exhaust ports, so you can't just shoot into it with the force to blow it up. How do you overcome this? Send Han and Chewy (along with Fin, the ex Storm Trooper Janitor) and plant a few IEDs (like any good Resistance fighter) and blow up the building before the SPSEDS finishes its star lunch and rescue Ren in the process.

Ren, is not a weak character to be pushed around by Emo Solo and his interrogation of her AWAKENS the force within her. So the big bad, overly emotional, Sith gets scared of a young girl in restraints. Ren quickly uses Jedi mind tricks to get free and runs into her rescue party as they are trying to figure out how to blow up the SPSEDS.

The foreshadowing of a “I know there is good in our son” moment by Princess, or, General Leia resolves as Han tries to turn his son back to the light side. Emo is not having any of that and kills dad, making Chewy and the audience gasp. Chewy shoots the Emo and wounds him, apparently his blaster pause did not work this time. Everyone else tries to escape and blow up the building to destabilize the planet er...space weapon..or whatever this thing is. But it is not over without an epic lightsaber duel between a Sith and two different people who have no training in use of the force or saber techniques. No matter, the epicness of the battle cannot be denied as the Sith is able to singe the shoulder of the janitor trooper and get beat by a girl only to be saved by an earthquake.

Meanwhile, back at the Death Star trench scene from episode IV, the explosion does not do the job so a new Rebel (Resistance) star pilot has to fly through a trench

(not at all looking like Luke from IV) and into a large open space (not at all like Lando and Chewy do in the second Death Star from episode VI). But this is quite different because when this SPSEDS blows up it becomes a star again. (Somehow a planet sized contraption absorbed the energy from a star, the size difference should be immense, and then became the star again when it blew up, but moved over a little bit.) Someone should have talked to Abrams about the difference in scale
between a star and a planet. It only looks like a small disk in the sky from here on Earth. From the perspective of a star the size of our sun planet is very small. So now all the gravitational pull in the surrounding systems are out of whack because One Direction's concert hall blew up and moved a star.

Now for the celebration...or not. Returning to the Rebel base (er...Resistance headquarters) and we tell everyone Han is dead. But R2D2, who has been so depressed at losing Luke that he has been catatonic, wakes up and has the larger map that the small piece held by the cute new droid fits into seamlessly. Now the Resistance knows where Luke is. They have been looking for him since he left the note telling them where he went. How could Luke know that C3PO would knock over a glass of java juice and ruin the instructions of how to get to where he was going. Everyone this entire movie has been looking for the map to Luke. We assumed it was so that they could go and get Luke to battle One Direction and Emo Solo. But, that is not the case. Apparently it was just so they could have a completed map. Whew...what a relief, our map is complete. 

The only person interested in actually finding Luke is the newly awakened Ren and she takes Chewy along as copilot of the Falcon.Will Ren find Luke? What will she do when she finds him? What does the original Jedi temple look like? Will we find out. Yes we find out. The Jedi originated in, wait for it...Ireland. Yes it is Ireland, Skellig Michael to be precise. Just in case you want to go there for vacation. If you do, watch out for the puffins. At long last, Luke Skywalker is found and Ren gets to meet the Jedi legend. What suspense. What drama. What will he say. Will it be a wise “I've been waiting for you.” Or an inquisitive, “why have you come?” Or even a sarcastic “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

Ren gets to the top. She finds Skywalker. They must have cut out the part where she said “I think this belongs to you.” But she just hands him the long lost light-saber. The lightsaber that would bring back memories of the time dad came out to get him really upset and Luke didn't want to listen, and they both got angry and tried to kill each other, and dad cut off his arm. Talk about bringing up all kinds of emotional baggage at the end of a movie.

And still the pregnant silence awaiting a word from the long lost Luke.....and we are still waiting. Don't get me wrong, I am glad he didn't speak. There was probably a clause in the contract that doubled his pay if he had a spoken part. He needed to save his voice for that new animated batman series, the Joker has a lot of lines after all. They didn't want to hang out on Irish island and wait for him to get his part right. I get it. In fact, I think Mark Hamill should be given an Oscar for best extra in a Disney Film.

My young girls liked the movie. I thought it was yet another in the series that doesn't offer much except cool special effects. Not sure where things go from here. I hope they get better.

From: Wade Howell

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Wade Howell

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The Day the World Changed

Not very often does the world change overnight. I suppose that a fundamental change in the fabric of the world only happens on very rare occasions. But it has happened. One day the world was a certain way and when people woke up the next morning things were radically different. But I will come back to this in a moment.

On June 26, 2015 the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled that same sex marriage is a constitutional right (or something to that effect). Some rejoice while others mourn. This ruling will be debated and discussed without end for some time to come.

Many people are concerned about what effect this decision will have on the Church. Now that the United States has accepted a definition of marriage that is contrary to a biblical view of marriage, what will happen to the church? To seek to provide an answer to that question, I will ask a few more questions.

First, now that the Supreme Court has ruled, are there still people in the United States who do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ? Did the ruling somehow eliminate those who need the Gospel from our shores? The reality is that there are still millions of people in our country who are outside of God's family and who need a savior. The church should not panic, we still have the same work to do today that we had yesterday.

Second, now that nine justices have voted five to four that same sex marriage is constitutional, did that ruling remove God from his throne? Is God no longer sovereign because of this ruling? God is the same today as he was yesterday. Overthrowing thousands of years of historical precedence by the Supreme Court of the United States has not overthrown the King of the Universe. The Alpha and Omega is not threatened by our country and its laws. The church should not wring its hands in fear, God is still as much in control as he has always been.

Third, has the judicial ruling taken away the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Are lives no longer able to be reconciled to God because of the votes of five judges? The power of the Gospel to change the heart of a human has not been diminished. The atoning work of Jesus is still the only hope for the world and still has the power to transform rebellious people into God's family. We should be about the same thing we should have always been about, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.

Although many Americans are upset about the change in direction of our country, I suspect that the Sun will still rise in the morning. People who are living in rebellion to God will still need the Gospel tomorrow as they did yesterday. The fields are still ready to be harvested and workers are still needed to bring in the harvest.

One thing this ruling may do is show people that the United States of America is not the savior of the world. Sometimes I think we forget that. Jesus saves people, not the good ole USA. People may be concerned that our country is getting farther away from God, but we have many laws in our country that allow for sin. Marriage is a high profile issue, but it is not the only issue that departs from God's will.

The United States, however bad we might think things are getting, is still not as hostile to Christianity as Rome was. (At least we are not crucifying Christians, well not yet anyway). The Church survived Rome and will survive the United States of America also.

Will things change in our country as a result of this ruling? It seems so. It seems that same sex couples will be treated the same way that opposite sex couples are treated in the eyes of the law. This ruling may mean that our churches may face legal challenges in the future. This may mean that people and organizations might try to force Christians to replace the understanding of marriage, derived from scripture, with a legal definition declared by the court. There will be challenges, but there have always been challenges.

There was a day that changed the world, but it was not this day. The day that changed the world was not June 26, 2015, it was a day a little over two thousand years ago. On that day a cosmic event signaled the birth of the King of Kings. On that day God took on humanity and lived among his people. Jesus was born so that he could die to save us from our sins. He accomplished his mission and left us work to do. We carry on, hoping in him and knowing that he has overcome the world.