Here are some of the live bloggers capturing the conference for your reading pleasure:

Sarcasmagorical (Brent DeBow)

Think Christian (Andy Rau)

Mere Orthodoxy (Matt Anderson)

I came across the following in The Mesopotamian (an Iraqi blog I read occasionally) and found it interesting in light of our recent discussion on the increasing number of conspiracy theories believed by people in the U.S. 

In the blog, Alaa says that because the U.S. "has been cast into this [role of 'Sole Super Power'] almost despite itself," the result is that

America has become the obsession of friend and foe alike, world wide. Just listen to any standard discourse of our Arab commentators, for instance. You will hear the word America or something to do with America, in every other sentence; if not in each one. America is deified, demonized, believed to be the source of everything that is happening. My son once told me that one of his teachers (of wahabi sympathies) emphatically told his pupils in class, that it was America that caused the Tsunami that struck the shores of Asia. Ordinary American folk may not quite realize or understand this; it is rather like some of these fairy tales when some quite ordinary person finds himself crowned as King or something of the sort.

Some of the lies told in the Muslim world about Israel and the U.S. are downright silly--to the point where you would laugh if they didn't have such dire consequences (I'll post about a particularly ridiculous yet disturbing one later this week).  Do these false beliefs lead to the hatred, or do they grow out of an already existing hatred?  Either way, they're extremely destructive and must be combated both here and in the Muslim world, to the extent that such a thing is possible.

If the Iraqis succeed in establishing a stable, free country (may God allow it!), great strides will most likely be made in the direction of truth, and the result will be greater peace.  Alaa notes in the same post that the battle for Iraq is crucial:

The best way to confront the theocratic regime in Iran and all other dictatorships in the region is for the Iraqi experiment to succeed; that is something that is clearly understood by all around us, which explains their [the terrorists'] desperate efforts to abort this project.

I hate election season.  I hate, hate, hate, hate it.  I'm not sure what makes me hate it most--the extra tension in the air, the mailbox clogged with ridiculous political ads, the repeated messages on my answering machine from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Riordan, the attempted manipulation, the rude jokes, being branded as evil even more often than usual....

As we go through these last few weeks before the election, debating for and against certain matters on the ballot, I urge you all--wherever you fall on the political spectrum--to remember that your words matter. 

Fourteen-year-old Julia Wilson discovered this the hard way when she threatened the president on her MySpace page (a federal offense) and was promptly paid a visit by two secret service agents.  How normal people can say the things they do about their political opponents, I'll never know, but there is a serious disconnect in "a very peace-loving person" who stencils a heart on her backpack and then "post[s] a picture of the president, scrawl[s] 'Kill Bush' across the top and dr[aws] a dagger stabbing his outstretched hand."

Other people taught her to speak this way.  She learned it was okay from them, and now as she speaks, she's affecting the way other people see those with whom she disagrees.  People will be treated badly because of her words.  People who don't deserve it.

God forbid you should do the same with your words.  So please, put away your holy water and wooden stakes, try to maintain your rationality, and give your fellow citizens a little credit.  They might be wrong, but chances are their motives and intelligence are as good as yours.

I think that's a good question to ask the people you see wearing this:

If you're not sure who this is, read the article by Humberto Fontova, "Che Guevara: 39 Years of Idolatry."

From the article:

The most popular version of [the] Che t-shirt, for instance, sports the slogan "Fight Oppression" under his famous face.  This is the face of a man who co-founded a regime that jailed more of its subjects than Hitler or Stalin's and declared that "individualism must disappear!"

Some of his other fine accomplishments (quotes from the article):

• Declared, "A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."
• Said, "I don't need proof to execute a man.  I only need proof that it's necessary to execute him!"
• Boasted that he executed from "revolutionary conviction" rather than from any "archaic bourgeois details" like judicial evidence.
• Urged "atomic extermination" as the final solution for those American "hyenas," saying, "We will march the path of victory even if it costs millions of atomic victims."
• Provoked one of the biggest refugee crises in the history of this hemisphere.
• Rounded up Cuban rock & roll fans en masse, and herded them into prison camps for forced labor.
• Put effeminate male youth in prison camps with "Work Will Make Men Out of You" in bold letters above the gate.
• Jailed or exiled most of Cuba's best writers, poets and independent film-makers.

Isn't he hot?

(HT:  The Pearcey Report)

When a Christian comes up against difficult intellectual arguments against Christianity, there are two paths that can be taken (and indeed, I'm seeing this split occur in the Evangelical community).  First, one can take refuge in the perspective so dominant in our culture that religious values and spiritual questions are "above the line" of rationality (as Francis Schaeffer put it)--beyond the reach of intellectual investigation, attacks, or proofs.  Spiritual "truths" are not in the same category as material truths, so challenges are irrelevant. 

On the second path, one sees all of true reality as a single whole--spiritual and material--existing as it is, never as its opposite, and capable of being known (never exhaustively, yet truly) through observations, rational thought, and revelation.  But since all of reality is the same kind of reality, this means there is only one truth about what exists as the spiritual aspect of that reality.  If the Christian who believes this about reality cares about truth (i.e., what actually exists), he must face the difficult questions and struggle through them, working to find the answers, for he's not willing to place his trust in something that is not there.  If Christianity is true, it will hold up to scrutiny; if it is not true, this Christian doesn't want to believe it. 

Can a Christian persevere through mockery, persecution, or a time of dry emotions and few experiences without the confidence that he is held up by a solid, true reality?  Can he act consistently and deeply on a faith he doesn't believe represents what actually exists?  I don't see how the first path can sustain the confidence needed for sincere, enduring love, service, and sacrifice.  On the other hand, I think the second path leads to a spiritually deep, authentic, persevering church.

For this very reason, Schaeffer encourages believers to grasp the reality of Christianity in his book, He is There and He is Not Silent:

The truth of Christianity is that it is true to what is there.  You can go to the end of the world and you never need be afraid, like the ancients, that you will fall off the end and the dragons will eat you up.  You can carry out your intellectual discussion to the end of the discussion because Christianity is not only true to the dogmas, it is not only true to what God has said in the Bible, but it is also true to what is there, and you will never fall off the end of the world!  It is not just an approximate model; it is true to what is there.  When the evangelical catches that--when evangelicalism catches that--we may have our revolution.  We will begin to have something beautiful and alive, something which will have force in our poor, lost world (p. 289).

I know we have people of all political persuasions who read this blog (and you're all welcome!), and so I have a question for our non-conservative readers.  I mean this question sincerely because I'm truly baffled by it, and I'm hoping that those of you who tend toward the left will be able to give me some insight.

Here's my question:  Why are normal people on the left obsessed with conspiracy theories?  And I don't mean people on the far left.  (You can certainly find wacky people on the far right who believe in conspiracy theories.)  I mean your average Democrat.  Granted, I'm basing this on my observation of the average Democrat (i.e., everyone) in the film industry where I work, so this could be a skewed picture of people on the left in general.  But seriously, I'm sitting in my office, listening to my co-workers talk about how Bush is "criminally incompetent," and then 10 seconds later, they're talking about how he has masterminded everything from the Foley scandal (somehow, this is supposed to help Republicans?) to the gas prices.  Besides the fact that these two ideas seem irreconcilable (criminally incompetent, yet secretly controlling everything), the second seems to me to be paranoid and irrational.  And yet, my very normal friends actually believe it.

Other examples:  two friends of mine at separate places of business were shocked to hear co-workers say they believed that Tony Blair and George Bush made up the supposed planned terrorist attack on the airlines that was "thwarted" last August.  And don't forget the "Scholars for Truth" who are promoting the idea that our government was directly responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center.  Lest you think that's just a few crazy professors, 36% of Americans agree with them that "federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them 'because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.'"

And how about the Valerie Plame scandal?  People were convinced that the Bush Administration was behind the leak about Plame's identity.  But of course, that conspiracy theory (like nearly every conspiracy theory) proved to be false--the leaker was actually opposed to President Bush.  Even after that was revealed, I heard people argue that somehow the President was still behind the leak.

If you're on the left and you believe in these conspiracies--or you know others who do--and you understand the thinking behind them, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this.  (I have a two-part theory but would like to hear from you first.)  If you're on the left and you don't know anyone who believes these things, I want to hear that, too.  If you're conservative and you have ideas about this, please keep in mind that I'm not writing this to mock people on the left, so please respond accordingly with serious comments only.

Augustine noted that “All sin, then, is also pride, even as Scripture says, Pride is the beginning of all sin…’Pride is the commencement of all sin;’ because it was this which overthrew the devil, from whom arose the origin of sin; and afterwards, when his malice and envy.” (Anti-Pelagian Writings, Chapter 33)

Every act with which we place something above God is a sin. Most commonly, it is ourselves we exalt above our Creator. Instead of recognizing His superiority, we seek to establish our own. Instead of submitting to His authority, we demand that He bends His rules in submission to us. Our arrogance has no boundaries until reality crushes it.

Satan was the original sinner. It was his pride that led him to be cast out of heaven. He thought himself superior and sought to proclaim his own authority. He did not and will never willfully submit to God’s authority. In his refusal to submit to proper authority, Satan is a theological liberal.

Theological liberalism questions the authority and supremacy of God as revealed through His Word. Instead of holding high God’s Word, it holds high materialistic naturalism and “higher criticism.” Instead of believing our Creator, it charges Him as a liar in its denial of inerrancy¹. Instead of genuinely applying God’s Word to faith and practice, it twists it to promote universalism, egalitarianism and homosexuality². Instead of seeking to understand the Words of God, liberalism questions if we can know anything at all. Satan, the original sinner, was also the original liberal when he asked, “Did God really say…?” Rather than listening and obeying, liberalism tells us we should have a conversation about it.

To deny the authority and supremacy of God is to deny a fundamental aspect of who we are. When we put ourselves above God and refuse to submit to His Word as liberalism does³, we cut ourselves off from out true source of joy. John Piper argued this powerfully last Sunday:

What words might the Holy Spirit use to open someone to the truth that their inferiority to God is good news? Perhaps this: What if we asked someone, “Would you want to watch a football game where all the players were no better than you? Or watch a movie where the actors could act no better than you and were no better looking than you? Or go to a museum to see pictures by painters who could paint no better than you?” Why are we willing to be exposed in all these places as utterly inferior? How can we get so much joy out of watching people magnify their superiority over us? The biblical answer is that we were made by God to get our deepest joys not from being superior ourselves but from enjoying God’s superiority. All these other experiences are parables. God’s superiority is absolute in every way, which means our joy in it may be greater than we could ever imagine.

Throughout the Scriptures we are told to rejoice along with the angels who rejoice. Men and angels were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. God will ultimately be glorified regardless of what happens, but due to the devastating consequences of his pride, Satan has no joy. My prayer for us is that we retreat from the liberal rejection of God’s authority in our faith and practice, so that rather than joining Satan in his lack of joy, we join the angels in joy abundant.

Footnotes:
1. Francis Schaeffer argued that inerrancy is a watershed issue, and denial of it is a form of liberalism.
2. Andrew Sullivan is a prime example of this. He refuses to submit other religious views and his homosexuality to the authority of God's Word, and argues that lack of knowledge is the Christian for faith.
3. Earlier this year, George Will discussed a survery showing that conservatives are generally happier than liberals. The survey relates to politcal liberalism rather than theological, and I believe there is a strong correlation between the two, but for reasons not really addressed here.