Today was my birthday, and it was a good one.  Sara cooked me a great breakfast, got me a sweet card, and we had a nice dinner as well.  The weather was beautiful with plenty of sun.  A bunch of people called me and left messages on facebook, too.  And of course, I got quite a few presents of which I am undeserving.  Indeed, it was a good birthday.

As I’m preparing for bed, a thought occurred to me, and I wanted to share it with everyone.  I’m not guaranteed another year.  I know that may sound like a depressing thought for one’s birthday, but hear me out here.  It’s not that I’m worried about not making it to my 26th birthday … I certainly intend to, and have no reason to doubt that I will.  What I mean is though, at 24, I wasn’t guaranteed to make it to 25.  Yet here I am today, 25 years old.  What a great thing to be able to say!  And that’s just my point - each year really is a blessing, isn’t it?  I just think about all the things I’ve done this last year.  I shared my one year anniversary with my wife.  I found out that I’m going to be a dad.  I finished my Master’s degree.  I got to camp with my in-laws in the summer.  I got to play in the snow in New Hampshire during Christmas.  I met new people, and saw new places, and many other wonderful things.  What a blessed life I have had!  I’ve made it a quarter of a century… here’s to the next quarter!

As I think about all this, I’m forced to reflect on the nature of people around me.  It seems today that so many want you to believe that your life is both meaningless and all about you.  Life, the secular world tells us, is just a coincidence of random particles coming together, and eventually that energy will die out and you along with it, so you might as well live your life however you like now, because once it’s gone, it’s gone.  Like many of the best lies, there’s a shred of truth in it, but it misses the important parts.  Life is a gift, not an accident.  It is a gift from the God who alone could make it.  And like all gifts, it is meant to be shared, and meant to be honored.  It is not a coincidence - there’s a purpose behind it.  You’ve got a purpose and a reason for being.  We all do, and so we should be living it to the full.  That’s where the shred of truth comes into play.  This life is a gift, and we should be spending it in a way that shows thanks to the One who gave it to us!  We should live, laugh, love, play, explore, fear, conquer, mourn, and all of that stuff.  And in all of it, give thanks to Giver of such great gifts as this, and the One who promises so much more.  So, friends, enjoy all your years on this earth, but just remember … “fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” May God give you many years of service to him and to your fellow man, and all the joys this life brings, and may we all always latch onto the promise he gives.

Over at Scott Adam’s “Dilbert” Blog, he put up a post linking to a recent study which he claims “debunks” the “myth of free will” as he has calls it. I thought this deserved a little bit of attention, so I opted to write on it.

Firstly, let’s take a brief look at the study itself as discussed in the article. The study evidently put subjects in front of a button and told them to choose to hit it with either their left or right hand, while being monitored by an fMRI. Meanwhile, the scientists in some way used the information seen from the fMRI to predict what the outcome would be of the choice. In so doing, they attempted to see if they could essentially “read the minds” of the subjects. The outcome? “Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand — a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. For those accustomed to thinking of themselves as having free will, the implications are far more unsettling than learning about the physiological basis of other brain functions.”

Let’s set out a few important admissions of the article:

1) The decision studied is not “representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. ”

2) “Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done” - notice that Hayden is not willing to say all of it.

3) “Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will. For instance, the experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions.” , “‘Real-life decisions — am I going to buy this house or that one, take this job or that — aren’t decisions that we can implement very well in our brain scanners,’ said Haynes.”

4) “…the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision.” (though Hayden does not think this is plausible)

5) “It’s not like you’re a machine. Your brain activity is the physiological substance in which your personality and wishes and desires operate,” [Hayden] said.

Okay, so basically we see that the study only focused on some very basic decision processes, nothing very serious or requiring deliberate thought. We’ve all probably found ourselves on a long road trip lost in deep thought, only coming to realize minutes later that we aren’t sure how we just drove the last few miles. Some of those baser thought processes can easily be dealt with on a very physical level, without much personal investment. We also see that, as I pointed out, even given Hayden’s take on it, a lot of the work may have been done by the time your conscious of a decision such as this, but not all of it. Thirdly, we notice that Hayden cannot close the door on free will given his findings. He recognizes there are other ways of interpreting the data, and he even points towards the idea that we’re not just machines - the brain is sort of a tool for our wishes and desires. Most notably though, remember that we are told the predictions were not entirely accurate. Let’s take a look at the chart provided in the article. From this chart, it looks as though there was only a 60% prediction quality. So it looks to me that all this chart pointed out is something we already knew - the brain is involved in our decision making process. But what does this say about free will?

In my mind, absolutely nothing. Free will is the essentially the independence of our choices from our environment. That is certainly not to say that things like genetics, how we were raised, etc., have no effect in the decisions we make. The idea of free will simply says that we are not merely products of those things. We can rise above them. When our environment and/or body gives us the desire to murder, or commit adultery, or steal, we have free will which says we can make choices about those things. We are not simply a dot on the line of cause and effect. The fact that our brain plays a role in that process only makes sense, since we are, after all, part of the world. That does not mean that all we are is part of the world. For some reason modern man wants to turn us all into just another animal. That view is far too narrow to accept. If people want me to test my experience over some science test, they better think again. If a test told me I wasn’t actually feeling pain, but I was experiencing pain, which do you think I would believe? Which would you believe? I can tell you that I don’t care what a test tells me - if I’m experiencing pain, I’m going to go with that even if science tells me I shouldn’t be. It’s the same here. This test fails to say I don’t have free will anyway, but even if it seemed to suggest that, I experience free will, and I generally think taking experience over some test is a wiser decision. Can experience fool us? Obviously so. But so can these kinds of experiments.

One more thing I would like to add about this, that to me is the crux of the matter. If it were true that free will was just an illusion, than this test would be void, because the veracity of this test is reliant upon the existence of free will. You see, as was already stated, free will is the idea that I can make decisions despite my physical environment. But if free will does not exist, then my thoughts are simply an output of my physical brain, which is the product of a physical causal chain. And if that’s the case, what reason do I have to trust those outputs? Does a purely physical thing have concern with truth? Obviously not, thus the fact that we recognize the existence of hallucinations, or even the mere idea of an “illusion.” So if this test were to disprove free will, it would also provide a reason to doubt the method of the experiment, as well as the conclusions of that experiment, since both would then be achieved through the physical processes of human brains. The ability to determine truth is dependent upon the notion of free will. It depends on the assumption that we are not purely physical beings - but are able to determine things independent of our physical surroundings.

So for these reasons among others, we have yet to be provided with any reason to doubt the existence of free will. And in fact, there is no way to ever provide reason to doubt it, since any logic which could provide such an argument would be dependent upon that which it would be arguing against. In other words, any argument against free will always ends up refuting itself. Free will exists, we are responsible for our actions and thoughts, and that is all there is to it.

Before I can move on and discuss the reasons for what I believe, I think it is important to discuss what belief actually is.  I have heard it said by several different people that belief is not a choice.  One example I saw was someone who said that they did not choose to not believe in God anymore than the theist generally chooses not to believe in Leprechauns.  Essentially, the argument is that we believe certain things and there is nothing that can be done about it.  If belief is a choice, we should be able to choose to believe in something like Leprechauns, or even something absurd like the notion that the computer you are currently using is a soft cuddly kitten.   On the surface, I can understand where such arguments come from, but I find this view of belief is far too narrow to be of much use, not to mention I think it is actually wrong even on a purely surface level.

We must ask two questions: first, what is the purpose of belief, and second, how do we come to believe anything?  To begin with, the purpose of belief is to allow us to function within reality.  I believe that I am real, or that there are certain things that are wrong, etc., and therefore I function within reality based upon my set of beliefs.  The point of belief is generally to connect us with that which is true.  We do not hope to believe in that which is false, as this can have problematic consequences on many levels.  Secondly, and the main question I want to address, is how we come to believe things.  Belief is based upon a couple of different things, evidence and assumptions.  I’d like to talk about these separately, and I’ll start with talking about evidence.

What is evidence?  It is an experience of some kind, be that of an object, an action, or whatever else, that points towards a certain conclusion involving any given question.  For instance, if I ask “does the light go out in the refrigerator when I shut the door?” there are some evidences that suggest that yes, in fact, it does.  For example, there is the little switch that the door compresses as it shuts that causes the light to go off, which I can also compress even when the door is open.  The experience of compressing the switch so that the light goes off while the door is open points to the conclusion that the switch controls the light, and therefore if the door compresses the switch, the light will again turn off.  Likewise, I could put a camera in the refrigerator and shut the door, and then watch the video.  The experience of seeing the light go off when watching the tape suggests that the light goes off when the door is shut.  Again, these are experiences that point towards a certain conclusion - they are evidence.  Evidence plays a big role in our beliefs, because the more evidence we see, the more likely we are to believe in a certain conclusion.  If I see something that sounds like a duck, walks like a duck, looks like a duck, etc., then I will probably conclude that it is, in fact, a duck.

This is where we run into the second and very significant part of belief - assumptions.  Assumptions are a part of our life, whether we like it or not.  And these assumptions greatly affect how we feel about the evidence we receive.  For instance, when I compress the switch on the refrigerator, I assume some very basic things, e.g. that what I am experiencing is real.  But there are other things I assume, as well.  I assume that each time the switch is hit, it will turn the light off.  I assume that when I record the inside of the refrigerator that I have taken a large enough sample of what happens inside to determine that this is how it generally will act.  Again, these assumptions are made in all aspects of life.  The scientist makes assumptions about the world when he studies in his field, assuming for example that the world is intelligible and follows certain sets of laws that he can measure in an accurate and consistent way.

But let us not be fooled into thinking that all assumptions are created equal. That this is not the case should be pretty obvious.  If one person assumes that the apple he is eating is real, and the other assumes that the apple he is eating does not actually exist, both cannot be correct.  Furthermore, if I were to assume, for example, that nothing was immoral, I would probably wind up with a lot of people hating me.

But with assumptions, often times we cannot prove what we are assuming.  I cannot prove to another person in some definite way that I exist.  You are reading this entry, but it cannot be proved to you that I actually wrote this entry, and you are not just imagining it.  Or if you are talking to someone, that person cannot prove completely that they exist.  These are things that we must assume.  I must assume that there really are people out there who read this - I’m not just imagining a whole world where people exist but I’m really just talking to myself.  I can’t prove that though.  What that means is that at the very base of much of our so-called knowledge is something out increasingly secular world tends to berate - the “F word” … faith.

Unfortunately, once we have gone to this point, we can go on forever.  Any argument is based upon an assumption which is based upon an assumption, etc.  But that’s just what I’m trying to get at - there’s a point where we must stop and say “this is the assumption I’m making, and I’m going to stick with it.”  For instance, I assume that I am real, and that there are other people out there who are just as real as me.  I might not be able to prove it, but I don’t have to.  As far as I can tell, it’s the best way to go about life, and so that’s what I’m going to assume.  To me, that’s one of the important things about truth - it’s not a dimly lit path.

So getting back to my original point, I’d like to conclude with two things.  Firstly, everyone makes assumptions which determines how we view evidence, and secondly, we can decide what assumptions to make.  The reason I cannot believe that my computer is actually a soft cuddly kitten is because I’m assuming that my current experiences are true.  Since I assume that, the evidence is that my computer is, indeed, a computer, and not soft or cuddly at all.  If I choose to assume that my notions of soft and cuddly were incorrect, or that what I experience is probably false, then perhaps I could believe such a thing.  But I can’t, because of what I assume.

This is where I find the problem with disbelief or non-belief in God.  I’m not sure exactly what kind of evidence people are waiting for, but it seems as though no evidence would ever fit the desired quota.  Even if God appeared before them directly, they could still deny it, saying it was a hallucination, or whatever else, and I actually think a lot of atheists today would.

So on the surface level, maybe one could say “well there’s just not enough evidence for me, and I can’t help that” but it’s quite possible, and I think probable in regards to God, that the problem is not with the quality or quantity of the evidence, but with the one who denies where the evidence leads.

I’ve been on what you might call a spiritual journey concerning my faith for a while now.  It began over two years ago when I was praying for answers about going to Japan to do mission work.  I felt as though God really wasn’t giving me any answers, and I think from there I started to wonder if I had perhaps imagined other answers, and if prayer really worked at all.  I was also listening to the Bible on CD throughout my various long travels to Pensacola and back to Freed, among other places, and I remember having some questions about some of things I was going through.  It all started off with a few questions, and before I knew it, I was into a full blown investigation of my faith, covering things like science, textual criticism, other religions, and philosophy.  For the first time in my life, I actually wondered if maybe I had been completely wrong about Christianity, God … the whole lot.

I won’t lie - it has been a difficult time.  And if I’m honest, I’m not 100% of the way through it.  I still have a few questions that I need to deal with.  But I feel comfortable saying at this point is that I have not lost my faith, and I feel confident that I will not lose it in the future.  God, by his grace, has laid hold of me, and despite my efforts, I cannot let go of him.  I am his follower, for better or worse, and I do not see that changing.

But such a proclamation did not come without cost.  More than 2 years of deep, stressful and frustrating searching, not to mention the number of spiritual failures that have attended that search, paid for that proclamation.  Although, in reality God paid the price for my lack of faith, and therefore he paid for those 2 years.  But I digress - the point is this - I’ve put a lot into that search.  Because of that, I now feel that I can lay out my beliefs in a meaningful way, and that is what I’m going to be doing over some indefinite period of time.  These entries are going to be more for myself than anyone else.  I believe that laying down my thoughts in a specific manner will be beneficial to me understanding myself better.  Nevertheless, I do hope that perhaps they will provide some positive thinking points for someone else in a search of their own.

I’m not sure if any of you have watched this movie called “Zeitgeist.” For those of you who don’t know, it’s basically a conspiracy theory movie. My interest in it has to do with its dealings with Jesus and Christianity in general. The movie attacks the gospel in a number of ways, and honestly at first glance it can be compelling. But if you take the time to look up sources and search for the truth of the stories being presented, you’ll find a lot of deceit. So if any of you have seen it, and it has done a number on your faith, or in case you end up talking to someone else whose faith it has tested, I wanted to provide some links to help you start that search for truth in regards to that section. If you haven’t seen it, and you desire to, you can just look it up on Youtube. Anyway, two links I wanted to pass along on this.

First is a show from apologetics.com radio, dedicated to this movie. This one will only be available for free for a month or so more, and then you’d have to find and purchase it from iTunes I think. Anyway, here it is:

http://www.apologetics.com/audio/02_23_08.mp3

The second is a blog entry by Ben Witherington. He’s a NT scholar and he deals with the movie very well. This entry should be there permanently, so you can check it out whenever.

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/12/zeitgeist-of-zeitgeist-movie.html

Hope this helps out.

I love comics, and Foxtrot is definitely one of my favorites [1]. It usually provides for a good chuckle, though rarely does it provide for something to use here in my blog. However, when I saw this comic last Sunday, I knew without a doubt that I would use it for an entry as soon as possible. I find it interesting, because it illustrates (literally) what I have thought about on the topic of design in the universe.

I’ll quickly summarize this argument, and then get to the point. The fine-tuning argument basically says that as we have studied the universe, we have found that life could not possibly exist without some extremely specific details set in place in the very foundations of our universe. For example, the gravitational force constant, the expansion rate of the universe, among a variety of other parameters all determine whether life could possibly arise [2]. More specifically however, the probability of such parameters arising falls into the realm of statistical impossibility, so it would seem that “the dice were rigged” as it has been said.

Normally the atheist response goes something like this - “all these parameters had to fall somewhere, and they just happened to fall here, and if they had not fallen here, we would not be here to talk about it.” In other words, it’s something like a lottery. If you make one million tickets, and one million different people enter the lottery, someone is going to win by the nature of the game, and the fact that it was person X and not person Y should just be seen as coincidental. Applying this to the universe, the parameters were going to fall somewhere, and so it should not be thought so surprising that they fall in favor of us - they could have just as easily fallen elsewhere.

This is where this particular comic strip comes into play. Bill Amend is playing off of the irony of the situation here. The objects which Jason sees in the clouds are very specific objects. Normally however, when we “see something in the clouds” it is just because the cloud happened to resemble a general object which we recognize easily, like a dog or a face. But what would you think if you saw a cloud shaped exactly like a number 2 pencil or the Star Fleet insignia? I imagine many people would maybe look for one of those planes that writes stuff in the sky. Some people would assume they were hallucinating. Others might wind up frightened. The one thing people would not assume is that it happened by random acts of nature. One would be thought foolish who stared up at such a specific sight and said “well, it could have looked like anything, and it just happened to look like that.”

Yet this is precisely what the atheist attempts to do when he or she claims that the design we see just happened by chance. Such an argument is completely counterintuitive. To say “if it had not been this way, we wouldn’t be around to wonder about it” is, in my opinion, just a good way of ignoring the problem. Even the famous physicist Paul Davies agrees that such a response is really not an answer at all, but a way of ignoring the question [3]. Oddly enough, I imagine most people would have a really hard time ignoring such a problem in the cloud scenario, but for some reason when it comes to these big questions, it ends up being much easier.

Of course, we should not misunderstand - seeing design does not tell us who the designer is. If we saw such a specific set of clouds, we would be logically justified to look for someone or something that caused this sight, but we would have to do a lot more research and questioning to find out who or what that was. It’s the same way with this fine-tuning argument. So understand, I’m not saying you can go straight from design to Christian God. Nevertheless, I find it rather ignorant to act as though such specific things should be of no surprise. It’s as least as surprising as a number 2 pencil in the clouds - maybe even more so.

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[1] You can check out my own comic strip here: http://headofleslie.com/comics/

[2] http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designun.html

[3] http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/07/03/paul_davies/index.htm

I should add here that I disagree with much of what Davies says in this interview - a good bit of it seems to be problematic on a philosophical/logical level, with some of the logic in his suggestions about the scientific possibilities being downright circular. Davies almost seems to waver between theism, deism, and naturalism all at the same time as well. Regardless, I do agree with him on some points, and he offers some good food for thought.

I wanted to offer a link to a really great discussion on science as it applies to modern times and Christianity.  You’ve really got some big guns pulled out here.  These talks are not an attack on atheism or skepticism, as much as a series of Christians reflections on modern science.  Hope you enjoy it

Science and Religion in the 21st Century

A couple of months ago I was having a discussion with a friend about God and the like, and he brought up an interesting question which, I think, merits some thought. The question had to do with belief in various Christian doctrines. Essentially, the question was this - is our eternal salvation based on some sort of “theology test”? That is to say, when we die, is there some sort of check list of things that we had to believe in order to be saved?

This question spawns from, I think, personal reflection about the whole idea or nature of salvation. It seems almost absurd to think of someone who is trying hard to do what’s right, but perhaps doesn’t have some cognitive understanding of a particular doctrine (e.g. baptism), as someone who is going to be cast into hell for all eternity. Perhaps one might argue that personal reflection often turns up problematic results, and there certainly is great worth in considering the implications of Isaiah 55:8-9 (i.e. God’s thought/logic is far superior to our own). Yet, to leave this kind of question with that type of response might be too much of a logical parry, and perhaps even an excuse to simply not think about it. Yes, that may well be involved in the answer, but I believe there is more to it.

So what more can be said to answer this question? To find out, let us start by reading 1 John 1:1-10 (ESV):

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life - the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us - that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

These are some of my favorite verses in the Bible. In fact I love this letter as a whole. But I digress - the point is this - notice the emphasis on fellowship in these verses. There is fellowship with other Christians, but that fellowship is found through fellowship with the Father and the Son. It is that latter fellowship upon which I desire to focus.

When one is confronted with God - the one and only God, the God who created all that we see and experience - such a person must realize the perfection of that God. This is exactly what the followers of Jesus were confronted with, and it’s no surprise they chose the symbolism of light and darkness. God is not just a portion of light, or a reflection of light - he is light. James even calls God the “Father of lights” (Ja. 1:17), so that all light literally comes from him. That is the type of perfection we are dealing with. There is not even a hint of darkness in God, and yet we as humans find darkness lurking in the very depths of our being. Like a sleeping person clenches their eyes shut and covers their face with anything available when someone turns on the light, we constantly find ourselves wanting to give into this darkness and shun the light.

That imagery is so important as we now turn to this emphasis on fellowship. As I have studied this, my understanding of salvation has developed. You see, salvation is hardly about some sort of simple theology exam. It is about fellowship. We choose, of course, who our fellowship is with, and all too often humanity chooses darkness over light. But our salvation is found through fellowship with the light - in other words, it is through being in fellowship with God. It is found when we choose to deny that empty darkness (darkness is, after all, just that - a lack of something) and open our eyes and let the light flood in.

Fellowship obviously includes some expectations though. To have a serious relationship with my wife, for example, there are certain things I have to do and have to avoid. Yet, you’ll never see her sit down with a checklist to decide how our relationship is. That’s because relationships are not about checklists, and that is precisely what John is pointing out here. It’s not about being perfect, or having every little detail down - it’s about having communion with the blood of Jesus that paid the price for the darkness in me. This seems further shown through the idea of the “blood of the covenant” when we consider a theology of the Eucharist. Jesus’ blood paid for this new covenant with God, and so my desire is to be in communion - to have fellowship - with him.

This is born out even further as we look at the lives of those in the Bible who seem to be so close to God. Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah … these guys differed so much from other people of their time, not because they followed the law perfectly, but because they each were searching for this relationship with God. Abraham stepped out in faith, Moses implored God to show him a glimpse of his glory, David sought the heart of God, and Elijah was able to even differentiate between God’s power and God himself. These men sought out fellowship with God, and that is part of what made them so unique.

I find this answer fulfilling because it not only answers the question, but reveals a fallacy within the foundational reflection of the question itself. You see, the reflection upon which the question is based assumes that one could be searching for truth and somehow miss out on it. I don’t see any reason to agree to that though. If we recognize that there is darkness within us, only true light can rid us of that darkness entirely. So if someone is honestly and sincerely seeking to fill the void that is the darkness, he will find it, because no impersonation will work. As an analogy, one could not walk into a dark room, pull out a glow in the dark bouncy ball, and expect it to light up the room. At best that individual might be able to crawl on the floor, but even that would only last a little bit. The glowing material is only impersonating light, it is not light itself, and cannot help in illuminating the entire room. On the worldview level, this shows up even more. Some things might be able to vaguely impersonate the truth, but in the end, the person will only find themselves crawling on the proverbial floor. As it has been said before, God is not that which you see, rather, he is that by which everything else is seen.

The point is this - salvation does not come because we have some particular arrangement of beliefs. Salvation comes when we are in fellowship with the light - the truth. This even helps make sense of what is said in Hebrews 6, about those who return to their previous life separated from God. If one has truly been in connection with the truth, has experienced sight illuminated by the true light, and yet returns to feast upon the lie, and dwell in darkness, that person finds themselves in sad shape indeed. So in the end, salvation is not about our knowledge, or about us at all - it is about a relationship with the one who created us, and the one who longs to set us free. This is what the gospel is all about - it is about God trying to show us the right path, offering us illumination in an exceedingly dark world.

I know I normally reserve this blog for religious stuff, but I also reserve the right to talk about what I want, so today I’m going to take a bit of a detour. There’s something on my mind that I think is important, and I want to offer these thoughts to you all.

This is a very important time in our country. Over the last several years, during President Bush’s time in office, a lot has gone on. Terrorist attacks, war, economic crises, religious issues and moral dilemmas are just some of the things we have seen in these years. My point in this is not to talk about whether I or you agree with how these things were dealt with by him and his administration, but rather to point out the simple fact that the next President is going to have a lot of problems to face. These problems are going to require very serious and respectable leadership. If a strong leader does not take office, these problems are only going to get worse. Regardless of our disagreements on these issues, I think we can all agree on that, and so I would like to offer a couple of thoughts to everyone regarding how we make our decision on leadership.

First of all, I’d like to encourage everyone to think about what it means to be a leader. It seems that many voters today decide that a person is a leader based upon how they feel about certain issues. If the candidate supports issue X, and the voter feels strongly about issue X, then the voter tends to think that candidate will be a good leader. Conversely, if the candidate supports issue X, and the voter is strongly opposed to issue X, the voter is convinced the candidate will be a poor leader.

To a degree, it is obviously sensible to support candidates based upon how they feel about certain issues. Nevertheless, we must understand that even if a candidate feels the exact same way as we do about all the issues, this does not mean that they will be a good leader. For one, there is the blatant (though often ignored) fact that I am not the only person in this country. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, leadership is more than just feeling “the right way” about certain issues. A candidate could have all the right morals and motives, and yet still be a horrible leader. That is because leadership is more than just supporting or rejecting certain propositions.

So what does it take to be a good leader? There are a plethora of issues involved here, but I’d like to focus on a five traits in particular: humility, responsibility, justice, respect, and desire for unity. When we look at the candidates, we should be asking ourselves whether or not we see these qualities in them. Too often we look at the “check list” of issues, or listen to the smooth talking of the candidates, all which easily cover up these important character traits. But why should we look for anything less than these? If there exists a candidate who supports X, Y, and Z (where the voter agrees with all three), but he or she is prideful, disrespectful, and divisive, why on earth should they get a single vote? Those of us who vote need to start caring about these things, and honestly looking for them.

Secondly, I would encourage voters to take a great concern for morality, but to apply that concern to every single issue. For instance, let’s think about abortion. It blows my mind how out of the mouth of a candidate can come both the support of killing the unborn and the words “God bless you.” I find that almost blasphemous, and I think we should be concerned about those kinds of things. At the same time, too many people ignore the other side. For example, I recently heard some pro-life candidates talking about the problems with Iran. One of them said that the enemy should be prepared to see the “gates of hell”, while another opted instead to mock the Muslim beliefs about the afterlife. Yet both of these candidates would call themselves followers of Christ. This too should be troubling to people.

What we have got to understand here is that life is precious, not on the basis of its innocence, but on the basis that it is made in the image of God. The only reason life has intrinsic value - something objective that no man can take away - is because God has given it that value. So whether I take that value away by stating that the life is yet unborn, or whether I take it away by viewing that life as an enemy, I have still devalued something when I have no authority to do so. It is just as bad to have no concern for the eternity of a person’s soul who has lived life poorly as it is to have no concern for the sanctity of a life yet lived. I use abortion just as an example, since it is one of the main moral issues facing us today, but this principle needs to be taken into consideration in all situations.

Finally, I want to encourage voters to actually study what the candidates support and oppose. Do not just listen to what candidates say on the campaign trail. Sadly, a lot of things are said on the campaign trail that are simply untrue, likewise the media report things that make one candidate look good and another bad. My B.A. is in Communication, so one thing I have a little understanding on is how media and polls and all of that works. If you want to find facts, you’ll probably have to do more than listen to the news or speeches given by candidates. A candidate might say “I oppose X”, but when you look at their history, you realize they actually have supported it, and vice versa.

On the other hand, don’t just take one thing and run with it. Leaders, just like everyone else in the world, make mistakes. It could be something as little as misspoken words, all the way to a bad decision on a vote. The question is not just what they did one time, but what does their whole character say about who they are and what they will do? That is the question Americans need to be asking themselves right now. But to find the answer to that will take a lot more than just reading a blurb on the candidate. Knowledge takes research. This doesn’t mean you have to give up hours upon hours to figure out things, but it will take more than 10 minutes. If you want to be an informed voter, and don’t want to regret your decision down the road, this approach is what needs to be taken.

I know I’ve gone on for a while here, but I just want people to start taking seriously the privilege they have in voting. In many countries, voting is not an option, and in those where it is, blood was usually shed by people who were fighting for those freedoms. Even in some where voting has been an option, it’s not an option for everyone. Many years passed here in the United States before women or the black population were allowed to vote, and a lot of people gave a lot of time and effort to making those changes. For us to take advantage of such a privilege is quite sad. We need to take voting seriously, and understand that this is about the future of not just this country in and of itself, but of a country that has great influence in the world, and which will no doubt continue to affect the lives of millions, even billions of people. So you see, it’s not just a privilege, it’s a responsibility. Let us all learn to treat it as such.

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Here are some links that I hope will help everyone out in their decision process:

http://www.youtube.com/user/yd2008 - Youtube channel for “You Decide 2008.” There are a huge number of videos posted where you can watch candidates debate and be interviewed.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter - Site that covers political issues of the candidates using a “truth-o-meter.” It discusses the claims of candidates, in the form of claims regrading themselves and claims regarding their opponents.

http://www.vote-smart.org/index.htm - Site that covers the candidates in a number of different ways, and includes a voting record where applicable.

I came across this the other day, and thought I would share it with everyone. It is a good discussion on a British radio show between John Lennox (Christian) and Robert Stovold (Atheist), on the topic of science and God. The speakers didn’t have enough time to cover it all, but it’s still worth listening to, to get those brain juices flowing.

http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={FBF8DF42-8DFA-4B7B-8BF7-9192B232BE2A}