There’s a certain sense of community in a small town, I was always told when I lived in a bigger city. This was presented to me as one of the advantages, perhaps the big advantage, of small town life over city life.

Well, it’s true. There is a certain sense of community here in Limon. I’ll provide a couple of anecdotes as examples. Not proof, mind you, as these are just anecdotes and are therefore, well, anecdotal.

We’re doing a lot of work on our house right now, including redoing the foundation walls of our cellar. This was necessary as said walls were beginning to cave in. I prefer my walls to be of the non-caving-in variety, and hence the work. For consideration of the two proffered anecdotes, it is necessary to understand two byproducts of this work: 1) my cellar for a period of time was open to the public in a very literal sense, and 2) there are large piles of dirt around my house.

Now, the anecdotes:

Anecdote the first:

We had left for a few days to go to South Dakota for my ordination examination. Upon my return, I discovered some beer cans and assorted other paraphernalia indicating that some of my neighbors had been taking advantage of the non-secured nature of the cellar for some carousing.

Talking to some neighbors about this state of affairs, my wife was told not to be too concerned about such nocturnal comings and goings. “People are curious”, she was informed. People have a sense of community, you see, and so if they spend some time in your cellar while you’re out of town, don’t be too concerned. We’re all family here.

Anecdote the second:

The other day I noticed a backhoe out my office window. Of itself, this was not to be wondered at, since backhoes and cement trucks and the like have been regular guests in the Powell family backyard of late. But this backhoe was smaller, and of a different color than the one that had been around. It looked familiar. As I watched it, I realized it belonged to one of my neighbors just down the road. The backhoe usually sat in his backyard (another charming aspect of small town life, the presence of heavy machinery in the yard). My neighbor was doing some landscaping and decided to help himself to some of my spare dirt.

Please don’t misunderstand. I have dirt a-plenty right now. I am going to have to pay someone some amount of money to do something with all of this dirt. So I would not object to the neighbors helping themselves. But in the city one is more used to being asked by neighbors before they come onto your property and help themselves to whatever is lying about.

That is, of course, unless they’re thieves. But thieves don’t usually work in broad daylight under cover of backhoes that are usually parked just four houses down. No, these were not thieves. Just neighbors.

See, that’s that sense of community again. Share and share alike.

I’m finishing up working on my sermon for tomorrow, which is from Acts 13, and I am once again confronted with a simple fact:

Every time thus far that any sermon is recorded in Acts, the preacher connects the coming of Christ to the Old Testament promises.

The dispensationalists say all of those promises of the kingdom of Israel and the seed of David and the promises of Abraham were only to the Jews, and yet Paul and Peter constantly connect them to Christ, and extend them to Jew and Gentile alike, after the nation of Israel had rejected Jesus. How can the dispensationalists put such an impenetrable wall of separation between Old and New, when the Apostles in Acts constantly connect the two?

Just wondering.

Last night, in the fullness of time, I said, “Katie, it’s time to go to bed!” And she put up the fight that she always does. She wants to watch Cinderella, she wants to play toys, she wants breakfast. It’s always something. Last night, she tried a new trick- “I feel sick”. She’s sick, and that’s why she can’t go to bed and has to stay up and play toys instead.

Human nature rears its ugly head. We all learned early on that we got out of responsibility when we were sick. It took us about two seconds to make the next extrapolation, which is that if there’s something I didn’t want to do, I could pretend to be sick and get out of it.

Of course, there was always the guilt involved in doing such a thing. And that led to the next trick, which was to search myself for some little ache, some less-than-perfect feeling that could be the reason why I can’t be expected to fulfill my obligations. And the weird thing was, lots of times when I engaged in that process of trying to find something wrong with me, I would start actually feeling worse. Hypochondria and psychosomatic illnesses are of course well-documented. What many people don’t realize, though, is that a psychosomatic illness is not a faked illness. It is a symptom in the body that is generated in the mind. The mind is the source, but the feeling is real. It’s just that it’s impossible to treat effectively, since the mind is generating the symptoms.

As I get older of course, the body starts to work less well than it did when I was 18. There’s always some ache, some little niggly feeling. And it would be a matter of some ease to amplify those feelings into a full-blown illness and thus be excused from meeting my obligations. But one of the most helpful pieces of advice I got from my mother as a child was when complaining of just such some minor ache. She said, “we all have aches and pains. But we still have to do what we have to do.”

Our society seems to become increasingly therapeutic in its orientation. Every problem, every imperfection in the body must be treated by some medical technology, and failure to do so is some great catastrophe that all too frequently results in lawsuits. Or it results in the afflicted person opting out of any responsibility. They can’t take care of their kids, they can’t work, they can’t do whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing because they’re sick.

One of the things that makes this problem so difficult to address is the fact that there is a great deal of genuinely debilitating illnesses and injuries that occur. Chronic pain or weakness can be such a burden on a person. You don’t want to seem unsympathetic. But it’s not sympathetic to encourage people to invent reasons to avoid responsibility.

If it really is a heart problem, then the cure must be to the heart as well. And as in all things, the answer is forgiveness of sins. I know that I would most often try to get out of school or work when there was some insurmountable problem there that I didn’t feel like I could deal with. Some test or some deadline that I wasn’t prepared for. People feel a great deal of guilt about their lives- their families, their jobs, their involvement with church, and one way of dealing with that guilt is just opting out. If I’m sick, or if I have some mental disorder or something like that, then I can’t be expected to live up to my responsibilities.

But when we learn that all of us on our own are failures, that all of us fail our families, our churches, our jobs, because of our fallen natures, but that Jesus has removed the guilt of that and with His power we can get back on the horse and try again, then we can overcome that guilt. We can learn not to look for escape hatches or dodges, and that avoiding responsibility just makes the problems worse anyway.

The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the street!” Maybe, and maybe not. But there’s always a reason not to do what we should do. Katie’s already learned that. But by God’s grace and forgiveness, we can learn to go face our lions and defeat them.

Sunday’s sermon was on the topic of how the gospel frees you from all those in the world who would enslave you. Whether they wear religious garb, or have the degrees of a doctor or scientist, anyone who tries to take away the freedom of the Christian, who tries to use people’s guilt and fear to enslave them to their program. The link’s on the sidebar.

Rusty links to a statement by Patrick Reardon asking the question, why is the life of Christopher Reeve or Michael J. Fox worth more than the life of the embryos they would kill by the research they promote? A very good question.

I’d ask another question: Why are these men regarded as moral heroes when their only cause is to deny life to others for their own benefit? I am sorry for the family of Christopher Reeve, and I’m sorry for the suffering he went through. Likewise for Michael J. Fox. But I do not regard it as a great act of moral bravery that they agitate for a cause that they perceive will benefit them directly, whatever the moral value of the cause. Even if embryonic research was a morally neutral cause (which it is not), why is it an act of bravery and moral courage to promote research which will cure you of a disease you have? What would impress me would be someone who has one of those diseases and yet works against embryonic stem cell research. In other words, someone who promotes a cause that doesn’t directly benefit them.

Maybe I’m wrong about these guys? Maybe they gave a lot of money to disabled causes before they themselves were disabled?

Maybe.

Andrea and I have just recently discovered that we will be having a baby, Lord willing. This will be our second, and we are very excited and thankful about it. #2 should be due in June.

I’ve been trying to say this for ages, and then Scrappleface comes along, and says it with satire better than I ever have.

“Of course, we can’t assert anything positively about Monsieur Derrida’s recent failure to exist,” said Mr. Chirac, “We can’t even state that he ever did exist, since he may have been a mere metaphysical projection of our own prejudices against absolutes. However, in as much as we may categorically claim anything–Mr. Derrida will not likely be showing up for work tomorrow. Although, who is to say?”

I stumbled across an article on a liberal site, bemoaning the fact that Rick Santorum (“our favorite bigot”) got a law through Congress giving medical providers a right not to perform abortions or refer for abortions if their consciences were violated by abortion. Now I know this particular site is not what you’d call mainstream, but I think it represents a certain perspective out there.

What’s so terrible about this law to a liberal? If they really are “pro-choice”, shouldn’t they be in favor of a law that gives that choice? They want to force doctors, nurses, hospitals and insurance providers to participate in something they find immoral? These are the people always saying that everyone should have the right to choose for themselves.

Of course then one remembers the women’s rights conference held in Beijing, a country that performs forced abortions. I went to the National Organization of Women’s site and tried to find articles critical of China’s policy, and all I found was articles critical of Bush for being critical of China’s policy. There were articles critical of the persecution of Falun Gong, but none critical of China for forcing women to abort their children.

It’s just like the homosexual debate. It’s not enough for them to be allowed to freely practice their lifestyle, which they’ve had for ages. They’ve got TV shows, for crying out loud. Try to find one about a conservative pastor, except to mock him. No, that’s not enough. They want government to subsidize it and every voice raised in dissent to be silenced. They would force me to approve of it from my pulpit. If you doubt me, spend a little time looking at what’s going on already in Europe and Canada on this front.

So, choice means choice for them. Choice for the amoral “progressive” to never ever be restricted in any decision they ever want to make, not even by someone else exercising their choice. The choice of the modern liberal makes every other man his slave. And they call us the fascists.

A few stories that just must be mentioned.

First, remember the report that came out yesterday that was supposed to blow a big hole in Bush’s rationale for war?

Check out Powerline’s analysis:

Saddam was convinced that the UN sanctions – which stopped him acquiring weapons – were on the brink of collapse and he bankrolled several foreign activists who were campaigning for their abolition. He personally approved every one.

…

To keep America at bay, he focus[ed] on Russia, France and China – three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war. Politicians, journalists and diplomats were all given lavish gifts and oil-for-food vouchers.

With Iraq’s economy badly damaged and U.N. sanctions, Mr. Duelfer’s report says, Saddam’s plans for a skeletal weapons program that could be mobilized quickly led him to pursue the needed materials through illegal and indirect channels.

Starting in 1997 and peaking in 2001, he developed a giant smuggling operation that hinged on the establishment of “a network of Iraqi front companies, some with close relationships to high-ranking foreign-government officials,” the report says.

Those officials, it says, “worked through their respective ministries, state-run companies and ministry-sponsored front companies to procure illicit goods, services and technologies for Iraq’s WMD-related, conventional arms, and/or dual-use goods programs.”

Also, the political violence is heating up- right here in America. Professor Bainbridge has a summary.

Both via Instapundit. This is why I don’t blog politics all that much- Instapundit usually has the goods, and Powerline or LGF or NRO or Drudge or any number of other sites give all the substantial analysis you could ever want.

Read this. Especially if you’re wondering whether or not this election really matters that much.

It’s times like this that I thank God that He is in control.