How to Help the Poor without Buying Fair Trade Coffee

As promised, here is economist and Christian Victor Claar's answer to that question:

"Tim Harford echoes Collier, observing that coffee farmers will never be rich until everyone else is first; that is, until coffee growing becomes rare enough that it can command a higher price. Because fair trade creates more coffee, and not less, coffee will never pay well. Thus, only long-term growth and development will help the poor grow rich. 

What, then, can lead to real and lasting economic gains for the poor? The good news is that we have considerable information about this question, and a rich feast of evidence confirming the answer that economics provides. When prices are free to act as a signal showing people what to make either more or less of, poor people begin to flourish. For example, even though there continues to be income inequality within nations, inequality across the entire globe has decreased over the last quarter century. More importantly, the rate of extreme poverty has declined. Columbia University’s Xavier Sala-i-Martin estimates that between 1976 and 1998, the number of people living on one dollar or less per day fell by 235 million. Further, the number living on two dollars or less per day fell by 450 million. That is improvement worthy of our rejoicing! 

How does it happen? Why has it happened so quickly in China and India, while much of Africa has grown slightly poorer over the same period, even as we have given massive amounts of foreign aid to Africa? Simply put, in places where markets operate freely, prices act as a signal—to all of us—to stop doing things that pay little and begin doing things that pay more. In the case of the coffee market, the reason that coffee continues to be cheap is that we keep making too much because we choose to ignore the price signal.

Putting at least some faith in markets to be a powerful force for change in the lives of the poor does not amount abdicating our concern for the poor, instead opting to cavalierly put our hope in little more than faeries and magic dust. Just as we trust gravity to keeps us all affixed securely to the ground, and just as principles of particle physics assure you that the chair you are sitting in right now will not let you slip through its seat to the floor, markets work invisibly in ways that we understand reasonably well. Although this author is no physicist, he trusts what a physicist tells him regarding what can and cannot work in our physical world, though the forces themselves cannot be easily observed; we see only the effects of such forces. 

The laws of physics are part of God’s providence; so are the laws of economics. In fact, many Christian economists have seen the providence of God in Adam Smith’s famous invisible hand of the marketplace. Two quotes wonderfully and beautifully illustrate. Consider first the words of Robin Klay and John Lunn, two economics professors from Hope College in Holland, Michigan:

Just as God-given productivity of the soil, combined with human labor and ingenuity, blesses societies with abundant crops, so also does the productivity of gifted human beings bless all humanity through markets. The somewhat mysterious way in which markets accomplish this without any one person directing it suggests to us the providential hand of God at work. 

More recently, in a book reflecting on John Calvin’s thought regarding markets, David Hall and Matthew Burton write: 

'God’s providence is present in all events. We need to learn to see his “invisible hand” working in all things. He is truly sovereign over all of history. To doubt that is to reject God’s lordship. Such repudiation is not merely based on an absence of information; it is also a rebellion of the heart against one’s Creator. Happy is the person who learns to see God’s hand in all of life.'

A key role for concerned Christians, then, is to permit and even encourage the power of markets to do the heavy lifting of the poor from poverty. One encouraging tool that is already making a difference in the lives of poor coffee and soybean growers is the Internet and mobile phone access. For years, coffee sellers everywhere and soybean growers in India have fallen victim to greedy middlemen by settling for a selling price that is below the going rate simply because growers did not have access to potential buyers other than their local coyote and also because they lacked accurate information regarding the going market value of their crops."

--Victor Claar, Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution

Does Buying Fair Trade Coffee Help the Poor?

Victor Claar, an economist and a Christian, answers this question.

"The modern fair trade movement has marvelous intentions. This author has dear friends who are also dedicated brothers and sisters in the faith who believe they are saving the world by purchasing Equal Exchange’s coffees and chocolate or by staffing the Equal Exchange coffee concession between church services. They carry out those duties with joy, love, good humor, and the belief that they are agents for change acting on behalf of the “least of these.” 

Yet, the fair trade movement, for all its good intentions, cannot deliver on what it promises. Simply put, coffee growers are poor because there is too much coffee. Fair trade simply does not address that fundamental reality. In fact, by guaranteeing a price to growers that is higher than the world price of coffee, fair trade makes the supply of coffee even larger than it would otherwise be. As we have already seen, whenever coffee prices increase, there will be another coffee grower, and another, and another...

Despite its marvelous intentions, as well as the good-faith monetary contributions that consumers make when they choose higher-priced fair trade coffee over other coffee, fair trade will never lead to the long-term enrichment of the poor. Instead, it creates an additional incentive for the poor to continue to soldier on in a line of work that will never pay much better than it does right now. As long as coffee prices remain low, growing coffee—even if it is fair trade coffee—will not pay well. The reason that coffee prices remain low is because there is too much of it. The fair trade movement does no favors for the poor by encouraging even more poor people to grow even more coffee, but that is precisely the effect that a higher fair trade price is having, leading to the FLO’s reluctance to take on any more cooperatives.

Low coffee prices, like low prices for any other commodity, normally are a signal to producers to make less of it and move onto something else instead. fair trade frustrates this signal, with unfortunate consequences. First, fair trade encourages even more coffee production. Second, fair trade makes non-fair trade growers poorer because non-fair trade prices fall as new growers in places such as Vietnam are attracted into the market by artificially high prices. Entry by new growers increases the supply, and bigger supplies of anything drive prices downward.

(Tomorrow, I will share Claar's answer to the question "If fair trade won't help, what will?")

--Victor Claar, Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution

 http://www.amazon.com/Trade-Prospects-Poverty-Solution-ebook/dp/B007411ADE/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

The Greatest Triumph for an Educator

This excerpt came from the intro of a book on science and faith (I am not endorsing the book, since I know nothing else about it). I liked his description of learning, however. Like me, he has no original thoughts.

“This book has been half a lifetime in gestation. I owe an enormous debt for what I have learned from authors, friends, colleagues, teachers, and acquaintances, all too numerous for me to be able to recall. Most of the ideas here, even those that I can't remember learning from someone else, I probably owe in part to others. I have always thought it is the greatest triumph for an educator when the ideas they are seeking to inculcate become such an integral part of the student's thinking that the student doesn't remember where they came from. If so, then my own teachers, formal and informal, are triumphant.”

--Ian H. Hutchinson (2011) http://monopolizingknowledge.net/contents.html

 

The Garden has become a City

"In the Bible, God's people are given great hope. God's people being in a garden (Gen. 2-3) but end in a city (Rev. 21-22). The garden is Eden, and God created it to be a perfect environmental for those made in his image. It had everything humans would need, form food to work to companionship. Most of all, the garden enjoyed God's own presence, and God enjoyed unbroken fellowship with his people in the garden.

Sin destroyed the fellowship between God, man, and creation. But the destruction made way for an even grander display of God's glory in the church. In another garden Christ faced Adam's choice--to follow his own will or the will of his heavenly Father. In God's mercy and grace, Christ-, the second Adam, chose to follow God's will and to take him at his word. What followed was the most terrible suffering by the only person ever undeserving of such suffering. Then, after he had borne the sins of his people as a substitute, and after he had exhausted the claims of God's wrath against them, Christ was raised in victory over sin and death. He then poured out his Spirit and created his church. 

From there, God's people have spread around the world to share the good news of Jesus Christ. The mission of the church will succeed. Jesus promised his disciples that the gates of Hades would not prevail against his church (Matt. 16:18). Christians may wonder at God's patience with the church and fear for our own poor stewardship of the church, but we cannot be anything other than confident about the church. It will succeed. The church is God's plan and purpose.

The culmination of history is pictured in the end of Revelation as a heavenly city, an eternal society of light in which God himself is personally present. The fellowship of Eden has been restored. Only this time the number of inhabitants has been multiplied many millions of times over, as has the intimacy of fellowship since God's own Spirit inhabits all those who trust in Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins. The garden has become the city."

-Mark Dever, The Church 

  http://www.amazon.com/The-Church-Gospel-Made-Visible/dp/1433677768/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335618347&sr=1-4

That Idol You Love Doesn't Love You Back

Good post from Justin Buzzard (not a nickname for me, by the way).

http://www.justinbuzzard.net/2012/04/25/that-idol-that-you-love-it-doesnt-love-you-back/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BuzzardBlog+%28Buzzard+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Struggling with Homosexuality Like a Christian Part 2

“Having patience with your own weaknesses is, I think, something of what Paul was commending when he described the tension of living on this side of wholeness. When God acts climactically to reclaim the world and raise our dead bodies from the grave, there will be no more homosexuality. But until then, we wait for what we do not see. Washed and waiting. That is my life—my identity as one who is forgiven and spiritually cleansed and my struggle as one who perseveres with a frustrating thorn in the flesh, looking forward to what God has promised to do. That is what this book is all about.”

-Wesley Hill, Washing and Waiting 

 http://www.amazon.com/Washed-Waiting-Reflections-Faithfulness-Homosexuality/dp/0310330033/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335440223&sr=1-1

The New White Man's Burden

"Guilt in the modern sense- not a legal decision, but a mental condition- is corrosive and destructive and is an extreme form of the arrogant self-indulgence that is the deepest and most characteristic flaw of our Western civilization. To claim responsibility for all the ills of the world is a new version of the "white man's burden," no less flattering to ourselves, no less condescending to others, than that of our imperial predecessors, who with equal vanity and absurdity claimed to be the source of all that is good" (75-76).

--Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict (1996 A.D.)

 http://www.amazon.com/Cultures-Conflict-Christians-Muslims-Discovery/dp/0195102835

We Are the Four-Year-Old in the Backseat

"My family once made a trip from Dallas to the San Antonio area for my wife, Lauren's, birthday. On the drive down, my then four-year-old daughter Audrey piped up from the backseat, "Do you know where you're going?' I felt insulted. Lauren started chuckling. She just laughed, and then she asked, 'Well, do you?' 

I said, 'Please, I'm on I-35. You just take it straight down.'

Then Audrey announced, 'I think you're lost.'

I said, 'I think you're about to get a spanking.' (I'm just kidding.)

The whole thing was kind of comical. Four-year-old Audrey has gotten lost in the house. She really has. And we don't have a big house. This the girl who freaks out if she ends up outside all by herself. This is a girl who has no sense of direction, who has no idea which way to head to get anywhere, and she's in the backseat presuming to ask me, 'Do you know where you're going? I think you're lost.'

I said, 'Well, um, you can't spell your name. So there's that.'

Okay, I didn't say that either. But this is kind of what happens every time we presume to put God under the microscope of our scrutiny, our logic, or our preconceptions of what he should be like or what he should do.

'How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!' is God's way  of saying to Paul, 'Are you serious? You're going to scrutinize how I govern? Do you know how small you are? Do you know how inadequate you are to even comprehend your own life? You can't comprehend and figure out your own shortcomings, your own failures, why you're drawn to sin, and why there are things that master you, yet you'll scrutinize me?' We are the four-year-old in the backseat telling Dad he doesn't know where he's going."

--Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel

Was It Hidden or Not? The Gospel in the Old Testament

How can exactly the same gospel that be said, on the one hand, to have been prophesied and now fulfilled, and on the other hand, to be have been hidden and now revealed? The question is not an easy one...I do note that in one remarkable passage Paul dares to bring both of these themes together. At the end of Romans, he writes, 

"Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him— to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen" (Rom. 16:25-27)

This is astonishing. At one and the same time, Paul says that the gospel has been “hidden for long ages past,” yet now that it has been revealed and made known this act of disclosure is through the prophetic writings! So is it hidden or not? If it has been hidden, how can it be made known through the Scriptures? If it is made known through the Scriptures, how can one reasonably say that it has been hidden, when the Old Testament Scriptures have been around for a long time?

Paul’s point, I think, is that believing the OT Scriptures are true is not enough. After all, until he became a Chrsitian, Paul himself passionately believed in what we would today call the OT—but that did not ensure that he found there the message of the crucified Messiah…

The point is that however much the OT points to Jesus, much of this prophesy is in veiled terms—in types and shadows and structures of thought. The sacrificial system prepares the way for the supreme sacrifice; the office of high priest anticipates the supreme intermediary between God and sinful human beings, the man Christ Jesus; the Passover displays God’s wrath and provides a picture of the ultimate Passover lamb whose blood averts that wrath; the announcement of a new covenant (Jer. 31) and a new priesthood (Ps. 110) pronounce the obsolescence in principle of the old covenant and priesthood. Hypothetically, if there had been some perfect people around to observe what was going on, people with an unblemished heart for God, they might well have observed the patterns and understood the plan. But the world has been peopled with sinners since the fall, and the OT Scriptures God gave were often in some measure misunderstood. That there was human fault in this misunderstanding was presupposed by Jesus himself when he berates his followers: “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25-26). Yet at the same time, matters had to be veiled. If the prophesies about Jesus had all been crystal clear and absolutely univocal, one could not imagine how the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate and Herod could have so radically misunderstood what they were doing. True, they should have understood anyway. But Paul says, empirically, none of them did: “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). Thus, it was God’s wise plan to have wicked human beings effect his own good purposes of redemption; it was his matchless grace and wisdom that provided revelation clear enough to be understood after the events to which pointed had occurred, but veiled enough that rebellious sinners would in some measure misinterpret it and put it together in wrong ways.”

--D.A. Carson, The Cross and Chrsitian Ministry 

We All Want to be Number One

"By the cross, God sets aside and shatters all human pretensions to strength and wisdom.

This is a central theme of Scripture. God made us to gravitate toward him, to acknowledge with joy and obedience that he is the center of all, that he alone is God. The heart of our wretched rebellion is each of us wants to be number one. We make ourselves the center of all our thoughts and hopes and imaginings. This vicious lust to be first works its way outward not only in hatred, war, rape, greed, covetousness, malice, bitterness, and much more, but also in self-righteousness, self-promotion, manufactured religions, and domesticated gods. 

We ruefully acknowledge how self-centered we are after we have had an argument with someone. Typically, we mentally conjure up a rerun of the argument, thinking up all the things we could have said, all the things we should have said. In such reruns, we always win. After an argument, have you ever conjured up a rerun in which you lost?

--D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry (1993 A.D.)

 

It Takes a Village to Raise a Child--Or Does It?

“Collectivism hides in a forest of reassuring bromides. ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child,’ the secular intone. ‘Every child is my child,’ the pious drowsily respond. Of all these deceptions the language of ‘children’s rights’ is the most brilliant—and also the most daring, for in no imaginable world would children be competent to exercise their ‘rights’ themselves. The primary decision maker in the life of a child must always be, and always is, someone else; if not the parents, then the state. So, although most rights limit the reach of the government, so-called children’s rights increase it. They do nothing to empower children; they only empower mandarins. I am reminded of an election-year scuffle between a father, who was also a candidate, and a social service functionary. ‘No government bureaucrat could love my children as I do,’ the father said. ‘That’s not true,’ protested the functionary, ‘I love them just as much.’ ‘What are their names?’ asked the father.”

--J. Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience

http://www.amazon.com/The-Revenge-Conscience-Politics-Fall/dp/1608997529/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334969319&sr=1-1

What Does it Mean to be Baptist? Part 2- Church and State

Those of us who think of Mark Dever as a pastor often forget that he did his Ph.D in church history. In this excerpt, Dever discusses an issue that Nathan Finn alluded to in yesterday's post: namely, that the Baptist view of the church as a voluntarily gathered body of regenerate believers was considered radical until a few centuries ago (excluding, of course, the first three centuries of the church). Dever draws out the implications of the idea of regenerate church membership for the relationship between church and state.

"Recapturing the New Testament picture of a church of believers challenged the assumptions most people had made since Constantine, namely, that the state is responsible to provide fo rthe church and the church is responsible for guiding the state. The strongest connection of this sort between church and state continued among Constantine's heirs ans others in the Eastern Orthodox areas. In the East, what has been called caesaro-papism treated the church as the responsibility of the ruler; in effect, to see Caesar as the pope, thus the name. In the West, a less centralized and more varied relationship has existed between church and state. Whereas the state typically held the dominant position in the East, especially since the rise of Islam, the church typically had predominance in the West, given its more centralized organization and tradition of enforcing episcopal jurisdiction over rulers. At times emperors were excommunicated, and entire cities were interdicted--unthinkable in the East.

During the Protestant Reformation the leading theologians continued to affirm the traditional Western understanding of the relationship between church and state. Whereas a somewhat more passive (Lutheran) or aggressive (Calvinist) stance was taken toward the magistrate's authority, the various reformations effected little immediate change in the state-church relationship. A nation facing a reformation would focus on the questions of which church to recognize and which structures to adopt, two questions about theology and leadership that did not disrupt the basic unit of the European parish. Protestant nations varied in their answers to these questions. But in no magisterial reformation was the local parish dissolved or replaced.

As we have seen, the Baptist denial of infant baptism crucially imperiled the Constantinian church-state settlement in Western Europe. The Baptist belief in regenerate church membership made the relationship between citizens and their church, and thus between church and state, voluntary. This would have been unthinkable in the early and mid-sixteenth century. Ultimately, the Baptist ecclesiology provided the seed for the birth of the modern notions of freedom of religion, in which no one church is established and the rights of every religion are secured. As Christians tried to answer the simple question, "Who should be baptized?" they found that their answer to that question had tremendous effects. If they concluded that only believers should be baptized, that would preclude having a membership that was co-extensive with the general population and so effectively would preclude having an established church."

 -Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

What Does it Mean to be Baptist? Part 1

 "...when Baptists are at their best, our identity is simultaneously catholic, reformational, evangelical, and radical. By catholic, I mean Baptists share certain core convictions with all professing Christians, particularly concerning the Trinity, Christology, and basic anthropology and eschatology. By reformational, I mean we share certain beliefs with all traditional Protestants, especially concerning the authority and sufficiency of Scripture and the centrality of justification by faith alone. Our identity is also evangelical because we hold to a conversionist understanding of salvation and embrace the imperative to intentionally share the gospel with others. And our identity is radical because we embrace a view of the church (especially the local church) that was considered radical until the last couple of centuries because it rejects any version of Constantinianism and embraces a believer’s church and credobaptism. "

--Nathan Finn,

Is Your Church in Sin?

Great new book by Mark Dever. Newly released, this book contains all the material that Dever taught us during the January class on the Church. If I had known this, I wouldn't have taken notes!

"In these passages [Matt. 18:15-20; 1 Cor. 5; 2 Cor. 2:6] on discipline, the meaning of  membership is seen. Discipline draws a circle around the membership of trhe church. Careful practices of membership and discipline are means to mark off the church from the world and thereby define and display the gospel.

Churches which practice no formal membership and discipline at least make it more difficult for the believers who are part of it to follow Christ and more difficult for those elders to know for whom they are to give account (Heb. 13:17). In fact, I would go a step further and say that churches which practice no self-conscious membership are in sin, since Christians cannot follow basic biblical commands without it. According to the New Testament, church leaders need to know who is and is not a member of the congregation. And perhaps even more important, Christians need to know this--for their own souls' sake!" 

--Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

 http://www.amazon.com/The-Church-Gospel-Made-Visible/dp/1433677768/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334766868&sr=1-1

 

Men are from Venus, Women are from Mars (At Least When their Husbands are Being Insulted)

So I was reading Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers, a book about America's founding fathers, and came across a section which reminded me of something C.S. Lewis said about the difference between husbands and wives. The first excerpt is from Founding Brothers, and deals with John and Abigail Adams. The second is from our old buddy Clive. Quite humorous, in my opinion. (By the way, in regard to the title of the post, Mars was the Greek god of war.)

“Although we will never know for sure, there is considerable evidence that Abigail played a decisive role in persuading Adams to support passage of those four pieces of legislation known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These infamous statutes, unquestionably the biggest blunder of his presidency, were designed to deport or disenfranchise foreign-born residents, mostly Frenchmen, who were disposed to support the Republican Party, and to make it a crime to publish ‘any false, scandalous, and malicious writing or writings against eh government of the United States. Adams went to his grave claiming that these laws never enjoyed his support…and that he had signed them grudgingly and reluctantly.

All this was true enough, but sign them he did, despite his own reservations and against the advice of moderate Federalists like John Marshall. (Even Hamilton, who eventually went along, too, was at best lukewarm and fearful of the precedent set by the Sedition Act). Abigail, on the other hand, felt no compunctions…Her love for her husband, and her protective sense of as chief guardian of his presidency, pushed her beyond any doubts…

Ultimately, of course, Adams himself must bear the responsibility for signing into law the blatantly partisan legislation that has subsequently haunted his historic reputation. But if, as he forever insisted, the Alien and Sedition Acts never enjoyed his enthusiastic support, Abigail’s unequivocal endorsement of the legislation almost surely tilted the decision toward the affirmative. To put it somewhat differently, if she had been opposed, it is difficult to imagine Adams taking the action he did. It is the one instance in when the commingling of their convictions and the very intimacy of their partnership led him astray.”

Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers

“The relations of the family to the outer world—what might be called its foreign policy—must depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he always ought to be, and usually is, much more just to the outsiders. A woman is primarily fighting for her own children and husband against the rest of the world. Naturally, and in a sense, rightly, their claims override, for her, all other claims. She is the special trustee of their interests. The function of the husband is to see that this natural preference of hers is not given its head. He has the last word in order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of his wife.  If anyone doubts this, let me ask a simple question. If your dog has bitten the child next door, or if your child has hurt the dog next door, which would you sooner have to deal with, the master of that house or the mistress? Or, if you are a married woman, let me ask you this question. Much as you admire your husband, would you not say that his chief failing is his tendency not to stick up for his rights and yours against the neighbours as vigorously as you would like? A bit of an Appeaser?”

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Joseph Ellis

C.S. Lewis

So You Wanna See a Picture of Jesus?

“If Jesus is the image of the invisible God, how do we see Jesus today? Jesus is not to be worshipped through physical icons or images. We have no account of him teaching his disciples to draw or sketch or sculpt. We have books they wrote but no images that remain for our adoration. In fact, the earliest image we have found of Christ was made in derision. It was found on the wall of a Roman catacomb. It is a cross with a stick figure and a donkey’s head with the mocking inscription scrawled beneath: “Aleximenos worships his god.”

John of Damascus said that to deny icons was to deny the incarnation. It may be that in his day some who denied the use of icons did deny the incarnation, but those who went before him neither denied the incarnation nor used icons. The point of the incarnation was never the mere physical appearance of Christ. It was the life of flesh and blood that he lived out. Christ could probably not be identified in a photo of him with the 12 disciples. There was nothing distinctive in his appearance (Isa. 53:3). But let that photograph become a moving picture, and I think by his loving interaction with others, his glory would begin to appear.

Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean to deride our desire for the visible. People say this is a visible age. Every age is a visible age. We are made to crave the immediacy of sight. We naturally desire to see God immediately, but that blessing was taken from us at the fall. We live in salvation history in the era not of the eye but of the ear. One day that glorious immediacy of seeing God will be restored to us—that is the climax of the Bible. That is the consummation we find in Revelation 22:4—they shall see God! Until then, God is most visible, it seems, not in two-dimensional paintings, but in the lives lived out in the local church. That is his plan for church membership: to display oh his nature of goodness and love and so bring him praise.”

--Mark Dever, “The Practical Issue of Church Membership,” in Those Who Must Give an Account

Putting Her Out of My Misery

“In a society like ours, with no more frontier and hardly enough room to turn around, killing the sufferer may well be the cheapest and easiest way to make the painful sight go away. As someone said in the case of George DeLury, imprisoned for poisoning and suffocating his sick wife, I may say I am putting her out of her misery, but I am really putting her out of mine.”

--J. Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience 

Audio Sermons from Together for the Gospel

Here is the site where the sermons from Together for the Gospel will be available for download.

http://t4g.org/resources/audio/

Who Can Forgive Sins But God Alone?

“We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toes and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.

-C.S. Lewis 

The Truth About Tolerance

“What then is the truth about tolerance? The meaning of this virtue is not tolerating per se, but tolerating what ought to be tolerated. Practicing it means putting up with just those bad things that, for the sake of some greater good or of moral law, we ought to put up with. We are not practicing the virtue when fail to put up with bad things that we ought to put up with, such as the expression of false opinions in debate; nor are we practicing it when do put up with bad things that we ought not to put up with, such as rape. But making such distinctions requires knowing the truth about goods, bads, greater goods, and moral law. There is nothing neutral about that. It requires that we avoid not strong convictions, but false convictions; it requires not refusing to act, but acting. As Abraham Kuyper, J.B. Phillips, and C.S. Lewis have said in nearly identical words, ‘There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.’”

--J. Budziszewski, "The Revenge of Conscience" 

Calling Abortion by Name

“Most abortion-minded women pretend to themselves that they are boxed in by circumstances; they say things like ‘I know abortion is wrong, but I just can’t have a baby right now.’ One counselor I know simply asks, ‘What do you call what’s in you?’ Unless thoroughly drilled, hardly anyone calls it a ‘fetus;’ no matter what her conscious views about abortion, almost every pregnant woman instinctively replies, ‘I call it a baby.’ But then my counselor friend can say without offense, ‘Then it sounds like you already have a baby. The question isn’t whether to have one, but what you’re going to do with the one you’ve got.”

--J. Budziszewsi, The Revenge of Conscience

How Deep is the Wisdom and the Knowledge of God?

"How deep is the wisdom and the knowledge of God? God knows every word in every language in every sentence in every paragraph in every chapter of every book ever written. He knows every fact of history past and future, every bit of truth discovered and undiscovered, and every proof of science known and unknown."

--Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel 

 

 

An Amazing Invention that Will Lift Millions Out of Poverty

“Imagine a spectacular invention: a machine that can convert corn into stereo equipment. When running at full capacity, this machine can turn fifty bushels of corn into a CD player. Or with one switch of the dial, it will convert 1500 bushels of soybeans into a four-door sedan. But this machine is even more versatile than that; when properly programmed, it can turn Windows software into the finest French wines. Or a Boeing 747 into enough fresh fruits and vegetables to feed a city for months. Indeed, the most amazing thing about this invention is that it can be set up anywhere in the world and programmed to turn whatever is grown or produced there into things that are usually much usually much harder to come by.

Remarkably, it works for poor countries, too. Developing nations can pout the things they manage to produce—commodities, cheap textiles, basic manufactured goods—into the machine and obtain goods that might otherwise be denied them: food medicine, more advanced manufactured goods. Obviously, poor countries that have access to this machine would grow faster than countries that did not. We would expect that making this machine accessible to poor countries would be part of our strategy for lifting billions of people around the globe out of dire poverty.

Amazingly, this invention already exists. It is called trade.”

--Charles Wheelan, Naked Economics

Why Do People Kill Black Rhinos?

“The black rhinoceros is one of the most endangered species on the planet. Fewer than 2,500 of them roam southern Africa, down from about 65,000 in 1970. This is an ecological disaster in the making. It is also a situation in which basic economics can tell us why the species is in such trouble—and perhaps even what we can do about it.

Why do people kill black rhinoceroses? For the same reason they sell drugs and cheat on their taxes. Because they can make a lot of money relative to the risk of getting caught. In many Asian countries, the horn of the black rhino is believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac and fever reducer. It is also used to make handles on traditional Yemenese daggers. As a result, a single rhino horn can fetch $30,000 on the black market—a princely sum in countries where per capita income is around $1,000 a year and falling. In other words, the black rhino is worth far more dead than alive to the people of impoverished southern Africa.

Sadly, this is a market that does not naturally correct itself. Unlike automobiles or personal computers, firms can’t produce new black rhinos as they see the supply dwindling. Indeed, quite the opposite force is at work; as the black rhino becomes more and more imperiled, the black market price for rhino horns rises, providing poachers even more incentive to hunt down the remaining animals. This vicious circle is compounded by another aspect of the situation that is common to many environmental challenges: Most black rhinos are communal property rather than private property. That may sound wonderful. In fact, it creates more conservation problems than it solves. Imagine that all the black rhinos were in the hands of a single avaricious rancher who had no qualms about making rhino horns into Yemenese daggers. This rancher has not a single environmental bone in his body. Indeed, he is so mean and selfish that sometimes he kicks his dog just because it gives him utility. Would this ogre of a rhino rancher have let his herd fall from 65,000 to 2,500 in thirty years? Never. He would have bred and protected the animals so that he would always have a large supply of horns to ship off to market.—much as cattle ranchers manage their herds. This has nothing to do with altruism; it has everything to do with maximizing the value of a scarce resource.”

--Charles Wheelan, The Naked Economist (2002 A.D.)

How Fear and Anger Relate

"Anger

Many people are familiar with depression. We are all familiar with anger. Anger says, "You are wrong, I am right." But if you listen closely, it can say more. 

How do you explain an overly aggressive animal? If it is domesticated or accustomed to sharing its space with humans, you suspect that fear is the problem. Though some run in fear, others attack, defending something important that is at risk. Listen to anger and you will frequently find fear. A woman rages at her husband for coming home late with alcohol on his breath. Sure, there is the "You are wrong" component. But there is also "I am afraid you are losing interest in me. I am afraid you could be tempted by another woman. And when you add alcohol, I get even more afraid." 

The problem is compounded with men because men aren’t supposed to be afraid. With no permission to discuss fears, men opt for anger. Sometimes their anger says, "This is the only way I know to get some control in an out-of-control world." But it’s a stopgap measure. Control that emerges out of anger is strictly temporary. Scripture says this about anger: "What causes fights and quarrels among you? You want something but don’t get it" (James 4:1—2). You want power, love, the TV remote, perfect children, but you don’t get them. 

Fear and anxiety say this: "You want something, and you might not get it." You want power, love, the TV remote, perfect children, but you might not get them. You want financial security, health for yourself and those you love, safe passage to work, and you know you can’t presume any of it. 

Fear and anger can be the same words spoken with a different attitude.

--Edward T. Welch, Running Scared: Fear, Worry & the God of Rest