Open Letter To Russ Feingold

Dear Senator Feingold,

I am disappointed (but not surprised) by your vote against Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey, based on his refusal to make a 'ruling' on waterboarding when he has yet to review the classified material on the practice.

The American people understand full well that Congress has the ability to make waterboarding illegal, if you felt strongly enough about it to risk the political fallout.

It is highly imprudent during times of war to tip our hand to the enemy about what specific techniques we are willing to use in order to gather valuable intelligence.

I have yet to see one constructive recommendation from you on how to protect your constituents from terrorists who are determined to eliminate us. You seem more concerned about their civil rights and material comfort than our lives.

Perhaps instead of wasting your time on fruitless censure resolutions, you could research what has historically worked against fascism and terrorism (not appeasement and retreat -- see WWII and Vietnam). That would equip you to work positively with the current administration to protect the American people.

While I am obviously not a fan of the anti-war far-left fringe of the Democratic Party to which you pander, I have a strong belief in the two-party system. In order for this system to work, both parties must come to the table with a realistic view of the situation at hand and work together for the best solution(s) possible.

Merely obstructing and taking the opposite stand on anything the administration does is a waste of time and energy and is NOT what the people of Wisconsin are paying you for.

When the Pitbull Meets the Porcupine

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Is There Any Doubt?

Is there any doubt that we live in a fallen world?

~Columbine
~The Oklahoma City bombing
~The terrorist attacks of 9/11
~The Beslan massacre
~And Monday’s murder of 32 college students at Virginia Tech…evil perpetrated by individuals—senseless, purposeless, meaningless evil.

Why does such evil exist?

People use this question to challenge our faith. How can we reconcile the existence of evil with an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God? If God is so knowledgeable, good and powerful, why does He permit evil? Why doesn’t he stop it? Or maybe he is powerless to stop it…so He isn’t really so great. In fact, maybe God does not even exist.

We do have an answer – but the problem of evil is not just a problem for Christians to explain. How do atheists and naturalists deal with the problem of evil?

Can you honestly believe that man is somehow the random product of millions of years of evolution and that we are reaching the pinnacle of civilization? That man in his current state represents the epitome of goodness? Not unless you have spent your life in a cave. Man’s inhumanity to man is staggering. How does naturalism explain murder, rape, torture, child abuse? What hope does atheism provide for a world filled with pain, injustice and suffering?

So what is our answer?

Clearly, the world is not as it was meant to be. Evil first appears in the creation story of Adam and Eve. God created a paradise for them with but one caveat – do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Notice that he left them open to the possibility of eating from the tree. He didn’t lock it up, fence it off, or put a force field around it. He gave them a choice and explained the consequences -- but they chose to disobey. Man has been intimately familiar with evil ever since.

God gave us free will – a precious gift. C.S. Lewis once said,

Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free, but has no possibility of going wrong. I cannot. If a thing is free to be good, it is also free to be bad. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

Of course, God knew what we happen if his creatures used their free will to do wrong, but he thought it worth the risk. Imagine a world without free will – we all would be robots, puppets, automatons – devoid of all significance and value.

The good news is that God had a Plan B. Knowing where free will would lead us, he decided to defeat evil once and for all through his son Jesus Christ. Jesus suffered terrible injustice, physical pain, torture and evil at the hands of people of his own creation. Although he was completely blameless, he suffered a criminal’s death on the cross.

Why?

Isaiah 53:5 says

He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
And by his wounds we are healed.

Jesus took on evil – head on – as the punishment for our wrongdoing. He spared us the awful consequences of the wrongful exercise of our free will and our fallen nature. By putting our faith in him and claiming his gift of eternal life, we gain significance, meaning and hope.

I Peter 1: 3-5

He has given us new birth into a living hope
Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade –
Kept in heaven for you,
Who through faith are shielded by God’s power
Until the coming of the salvation that is ready
To be revealed in the last time.

What an awesome God. He freely chose to become human and bear the penalty for our wickedness. Because of this choice, he is intimately familiar with our pain and suffering resulting from evil in a fallen world.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
That whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16