Tony Gonzalez

I’m not sure whether the fact that I still root for both the Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs reveals me to be deeply loyal and faithful, or just too dumb to know when to quit. But for a Chiefs’ fan, one of the great joys in life the last few years has been watching Tony Gonzalez dominate defenses and make great play after great play.
But the guy is not a moral genius. I recently saw an interview with him online. There is enough peripheral junk on the site that I won’t link to it, but here is the “interesting” portion of the interview:
Interviewer: How many guys is it ok for a woman to have slept with?

Tony Gonzalez: It depends on the way it went down. As far as somebody that I wanna spend the rest of my life with, low mileage is better.

Interviewer: Double digits?

Tony: If you’re over 30 I think you’re approaching probably double digits, but if you’re in your twenties, keep it low, keep low mileage, that’s what men like, low mileage.

I think TG’s answers illustrate a serious problem we have today. Our society has rejected moral authority and a biblical view of sexuality for a host of reasons: It’s too puritanical…it’s not realistic…etc.

Yet we cannot live with the consequences of this rejection. On what basis can Tony argue that women should be “low mileage”? Personal preference? Why would we all prefer “low mileage” partners? I think it’s because we understand that indulging all of our impulses (sexual or otherwise) damages our souls in undeniable ways. We’ve rejected biblical morality (special revelation) yet general revelation won’t let us get away with thinking that “anything goes”.

Why should I come to City on a Hill?

Welcome to my little corner of this website. If you’re here, chances are you’re checking out the City on a Hill conference. I hope that you’re able to find all of the information that you need, and I hope that you’ll apply for the conference. It really is a great experience, as our 240 alumni will attest. In fact, just this past weekend, I had a great time getting together and hanging out with about 20 alums from several different classes here in Lincoln.

Most of what you’ll find on the site is “official” info about the conference, but let me make my informal case for why you should apply to City on a Hill. Many programs like this (and we’ve done it in the past) like to use fear to encourage participation. You’ll hear stats about how terrible things are for Christian young people or how anti-Christian the culture is and other scary scenarios. And don’t get me wrong…there’s some scary stuff out there.

But what if things were fine out there? What if crime was down, revival was breaking out in Nebraska, America and the world? What if the Christian worldview suddenly became prevalent on the campus of every public school and college in America? Would programs like City on a Hill become obsolete? I don’t think so.

At City on a Hill, we cast a vision for life that is centered on God. What kinds of joy, pleasure and fulfillment can be found when we center our lives on him? How satisfying is it to discover that following Christ is not only a way to escape God’s judgment, but also the key to happy life? Not happy in the sense that you’ll never have any problems and spend all of your time loafing on the beach, but happy in the sense that you’re fulfilling the purpose for which you’ve been created.

In your week at City on a Hill, you will discover that God has a purpose and a plan for all aspects of life, and you have a part to play in his plan. We hope to see you there. Please send me a note to jjspringer@familyfirst.org, or call me at 402-435-3210 if you’d like to learn more. I can’t wait to meet you!

2007 recap

Hello! If you’re here, I suspect it’s because you’re trying to learn a little about City on a Hill 2008, and you were curious about the “Director’s Commentary” site. If you browse a bit, you’ll see that this is the first post I’ve put up in several months.

There are a couple reasons that I haven’t posted for awhile. One is obvious…if you look at my comment counts, you’ll see that this is a bit of a lonely place. But since you’re here, feel free to post a comment!

And in case you like to lurk here but not actually leave your footprints, here’s a brief recap of 2007:

Spring:
Carol and I received our foster care license and did some short term care (respite) for some other foster parents.
I took a trip to Colorado Springs for work and discovered (among other things) why people love Chick-Fil-A so much.
Carol and I went down to Kansas City to see the Royals beat the Red Sox on opening day. It was not a sign of things to come for either team.

Summer:
City on a Hill was a great experience again. Forty-one very cool high school students spent a week with us getting an intense education in the Christian worldview. We made lots of friends and had a blast.
We bought a new house so that we would have more space to take in foster kids.
I spent two weeks at Biola University working on my M.A. in Christian Apologetics.
I went to a conference in Connecticut for Acton Institute and met some great people and learned a lot about the intersection of economics and the Christian worldview. While I was there, I also received some life-changing news, as…
Carol and I took in four foster kids that are still with us. They’re siblings (5 year old boy, 3 year old girl, 2 year old girl, and 9 month old girl) They’re a lot of fun most of the time, but some nights you can’t pay ‘em to go to sleep. So I show up at Family First looking like I could use a nap. They’re still with us, and we thank God for the experience that we’ve had with them.

Fall:
I survived my last full semester of grad school. I just have three hours of work in spring ’08 and I’ll be done!
We sold the old house (actually this occurred on 1/3/08)
I caught a hot dog at the NU-KSU game!

Virginia Tech

I’ve had a little time to reflect on the murders at Virginia Tech a week ago. The best thing I’ve found so far was written by George Barna. I think I agree with his assessment, with one small exception. I’d flip the list upside down. I’m pretty sure I’d rather live next door to someone who came from a healthy family who had seen too much violent programming than vice versa. But that’s a small quibble.

I also don’t like using the word tragedy to describe the shooting. I think of tragedies as things like tornadoes and plane crashes. Acts of moral evil should occupy a different category in my mind. Certainly, the results of each are devastating, but I don’t like the implied moral equivocation. I’m not picking on Barna here. I’ve actually used the word myself when talking about the shooting. I just don’t like any implication.

Of course this massacre causes us to reflect on the problem of evil. Many apologists concede that this is the toughest question Christianity faces. I don’t know if humans have come up with any perfect answers to the question: How could an all-good, all-powerful God permit something like a tsunami, or 9/11 or Virginia Tech?

Here’s a brief summary of some standard replies. I don’t do them justice, but they’re a starting point for discussion:

1. “The problem of good”: This doesn’t answer the problem of evil, but turns it around. If there is no God, how could things like love and sunsets and Breyer’s ice cream and puppies exist? The atheist has some explaining to do.
2. “The problem of freedom”: The greatest possible good involves freedom. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself what you’d do if you found out that your best friend (in my case my wife) was actually a robot and did not “choose” your friendship? The greatest possible world includes love. Love entails a choice. A choice entails freedom. Freedom requires the possibility of evil. If God were to immediately stop all evil, what else would necessarily be lost?
3. “God understands”: No matter what evil or suffering you’ve faced, God understands what you’re dealing with. The suffering of Christ on the cross is unfathomable to the human mind. Jesus was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”.
4. Read the Book of Job. Is it possible that if God did answer this question, we wouldn’t understand his answer?
5. Melinda at STR wrote this.

I'm back

I’m back. Did you miss me?

Didn’t think so. I’m glad that my comment count doesn’t reflect my actual value in the eyes of God.

When I first thought of doing this, I figured that no one would read the thing, so why bother. But then one of my profs suggested that it would be good practice to do something like this, so I dove in.

But the last three months have been pretty busy with some other projects.

Blasphemy Project

How sad. A group of atheists has decided it’s not enough to deny God’s existence. Instead, they’ve taken a misinterpretation of Mark 3:29 and are encouraging people to create videos wherein they deny the Holy Spirit.

Please take a moment to pray for these people.

And check this response on youtube by my Biola classmate Doug Powell.

Victimless crimes?

I doubt you’ll hear anyone saying that porn is a victimless crime for at least a few days.

Carol and I saw the news about the kidnapping the other day, and I offered a prayer that the boy would be found. Praise God that he was.

I haven’t seen many details of the case. But I would wager that the first time that Michael Devlin used porn, his master plan was not to become a nationally known kidnapper. But when we misuse our sexuality, it takes us places we’d never choose or want to wind up.

I’ve never heard anyone say, “I’m sure glad that I ignored the Bible’s teaching on sexuality.” But when Michael Devlin did just that, he didn’t ruin his own life. He also damaged two boys, two sets of parents and countless others.

Please keep these families in your prayers, and please pray that our nation will stop pretending that we can deny God’s purposes for sex and still be happy, healthy people.

Abortion, population control and unintended consequences

China is facing a big problem. In some regions of China, the ratio of boys to girls is 130:100. In a few years, the nation is facing a surplus of 30 million bachelors.

This is due to China’s strict population control “one-child” policy. Although “sex-selection” abortions are illegal, they’re obviously happening, especially in rural areas. If you live on a farm, and the government has said that you can have one child, you want to have a boy. He will be able to do more physical work and be more productive. If the doctor tells you you’re pregnant with a girl, that means you’ll never have a boy, unless you abort the girl.

This problem is rooted in several bad assumptions:

1. Rising birthrates are a “problem” to be “solved”.
2. Abortion is a good way to control population growth.
3. If we tweak abortion laws to outlaw sex-selection abortions, people won’t manipulate the system based on their immediate needs, but will honor the intentions of the policy’s creators.

Are rising birthrates a “problem” to be “solved”? Certainly, a culture has to be concerned with distribution of resources. The Communist system has proven to be a disaster when it comes to distributing resources. A strong argument can be made that people are smart enough to stop having kids when they can’t be provided for, and that artificially lowering the birthrate through abortion creates more problems than it solves (immediate moral arguments notwithstanding). At City on a Hill, we address the moral problems with abortion. China is now dealing with one of the practical problems.

Statistically speaking, married men are more productive than single men. (You’re free to disagree with this assertion, but please do so using data and not anecdotes.) I won’t go into detail about this, but I will point out that my insurance rates went down when I got married. This is because when men get married, they are less likely to take foolish risks and more likely to engage in economically productive activities, because now they have a family to care for. China’s foolish population control policy has left it with thirty million extra risk-takers. They’ve aborted so many girls that these men do not have any prospect for marriage.

Like just about everything else on this blog, it all comes back to worldview. If people are merely resource consumers, then by all means we ought to eliminate a few, regardless of our emotional attachment to them. But if we’re created in the image of God, and He has given us the ability to create wealth, maximize resources and make good decisions, then we cannot overrule His ways and expect to prosper. China’s Marxist assumptions about wealth and human nature have left it with a big problem.

P.J. O’Rourke, though hardly a Christian, has some insight into these types of issues. In his book All the Troubles in the World, his chapter on overpopulation is titled, “Just enough of me, too much of you.” Try to check it out if you can.

Pearls Before Swine

Subject: Pearls Before Swine

When I get to the comics page, usually I only read Dilbert.

But the Journal Star just added this one, and I’m giving it a chance. A few of them have lighthearted worldview implications.

Like this one about cultural relativism.

And this one lampooning the idea that meaning is interpretation.