Responding to Oppenneimer and Lizza:Defending Francis Schaeffer’s influence on believers such as Michele Bachmann(Part 8)

Both Oppenneimer and Lizza have attacked Francis Schaeffer’s view, but the way to know his views best is to take time to watch his film series. I said that in my first post and I will continue to show all ten episodes of his film series “How should we then live?”

This is a series of posts concerning presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her religious beliefs. Particularly I will be looking at the identity of Francis Schaeffer who Michele said had major impact on her views. I also would say that Francis Schaeffer was the greatest christian philosopher of the 20th century. 

In 1979 I first watched the film series “How should we then live?” and it was so impressive to me that I returned to my high school with permission from my former teacher to view the series again. In fact, Mr. Brink would tell the seniors at Evangelical Christian School in  Cordova, TN something to this affect: “I hope you realize how important this film series by Dr. Francis Schaeffer is. Here we have Everette Hatcher who is in college now, but he is coming back to see this film again because he knows how valuable it is.”

The best way to understand Michele Bachmann’s worldview is to watch the film series “How should we then live?” by Francis Schaeffer. I have provided a 30 minute episode at the end of this post with a written outline.  In this film series the humanist worldview is seen as weak because it is not able to give adequate answers to life’s tough questions while the christian worldview can.  Humanism has a finite base because it is limited to finite man while the Christian worldview is based on information provided by the infinite-personal God of the Bible.

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Bill Muehlenberg’s commentary on issues of the day…

On Michele Bachmann » Bill Muehlenberg’s CultureWatch

Michele who? Some of you might be asking this question. If you live in the US you would probably know of her, for at least two reasons. She is one of a number of Republicans seeking the nomination for the presidential race in 2012. But most likely she is fairly well known because of the incredible demonization job being directed at her.

She must be doing something right if she is receiving so much bad press. Indeed, it can almost be taken as a rule of thumb that the more the secular left mainstream media attacks a person, the more likely it is that this person is worth supporting.

Indeed, the more hate the MSM showers on someone, the more likely such a person is worth being aware of. And if there is one thing the left in general and their MSM colleagues hate with a passion, it is conservative, pro-life, pro-faith and pro-family women.

There is probably no greater animus to be found amongst the secular leftists than women who hold to Christian and conservative values. That is why Sarah Palin has been absolutely crucified by the left and their media allies. They hate her with a passion.

But while Palin has not yet announced whether she will run for the presidential race, another conservative Christian woman has: Michele Bachmann. And like Palin, she is not afraid to speak her mind, and she is proud to champion her pro-faith and pro-family credentials.

So she too is being attacked mercilessly by the left. She stands for everything they can’t stand. She thinks marriage and family are vitally important. She is decidedly pro-life. She thinks the Judeo-Christian worldview is what made America and the West great.

Thus she is now public enemy number one in the eyes of the left. I can almost guarantee that if you hear anything about her here in Australia, it will most likely be negative and critical. The leftist MSM here are just as bigoted and biased as they are in the US.

Thus as her name becomes more famous, the more she will be wildly attacked in the Australian media, just like she already is back in her home country. So as I already asked, who is she? She is a 55-year-old politician who was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2006.

Prior to that she was a Republican Senator in the Minnesota State Senate. Last month she announced her Republican presidential nomination bid. And she has been under a tremendous attack ever since. She now knows full well what Palin has had to go through.

It is still early days in terms of which Republicans will be involved in this race, but she has already pipped frontrunner Mitt Romney in some polls. So even though it remains to be seen what the final field will be, I mention all this because of a piece in today’s religious press.

I have already been impressed by Bachmann. She is of course not perfect, and like all the candidates she has various strengths and weaknesses, but what I read today further confirmed in my mind that she may be the best Republican on offer thus far for the top job.

The headline of this story runs as follows: “Christian Writer Francis Schaeffer Shaped Pro-Life Views”. Here is how the report goes: “Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is one of the several pro-life advocates seeking the Republican nomination to face pro-abortion President Barack Obama and she cites Christian writer Francis Schaeffer as an influence on her pro-life views.

“In a campaign stop to speak to local residents at a church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Bachmann shared her testimony and talked about the Christian faith she and her husband share. That faith, which has matured thanks to the writings of Schaeffer, has led Bachman to a pro-life view that has seen her compile a 100% pro-life voting record in Congress and adopt dozens of foster children.

“‘One thing that Dr. Schaeffer said is that [God is] not just the God of theology. He’s not just the God of the Bible,’ Bachmann said, according to the Des Moines Register. ‘Since he is the Creator God, he’s the father of biology, sociology, of political science, of you name the subject. … And that altered our way of thinking, that God had something to say about our career.’

“‘Francis Schaeffer also said that life is the watershed issue of our time, and how we come down on how we view human life will impact all other issues,’ she said. ‘And so Marcus and I decided we didn’t want to be pro-life only, just as speaking… We wanted to live a life of being about pro-life’.

“The Register indicates Bachmann told the audience that, upon the encouragement to put her pro-life views into action, she and her husband began counseling and praying with single mothers and helping them get to pregnancy and adoption centers to provide further practical support instead of abortion.”

Wow, there are not too many presidential candidates who unashamedly acknowledge such Christian heavyweights as Francis Schaeffer and the influence they had. And her willingness to actually get involved in pro-life activism is impressive as well. It is good to see not just pro-life talk here, but pro-life action as well.

For those not familiar with the life and work of Schaeffer, he was a leading Christian pastor, apologist, thinker, and activist, who had a huge influence on the evangelical world for the past half century or so. His ministry in the Swiss Alps called L’Abri had a tremendous impact on countless religious seekers. I wrote up this incredible man and his incredible ministry here:www.billmuehlenberg.com/2009/10/14/notable-christians-francis-schaeffer/

Thus to learn that Bachmann is so heavily influenced by this important Christian is most pleasing, although not really surprising. Bachmann has stuck to her guns despite a tsunami of opposition and criticism, and it is refreshing to find someone not ashamed of her faith and her pro-life commitments.

As stated, we must await to learn of the final field of candidates who are seeking to win the right to stand against Obama. But in terms of important key values, there could not be a greater contrast than between Michele Bachmann and Barrack Hussein Obama.

www.lifenews.com/2011/07/26/bachmann-christian-writer-francis-schaeffer-shaped-pro-life-views/

 

E P I S O D E 8

How Should We Then Live 8#1

I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me.

T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION

I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought

A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas) and Post-Impressionism (Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat): appearance and reality.

1. Problem of reality in Impressionism: no universal.

2. Post-Impression seeks the universal behind appearances.

3. Painting expresses an idea in its own terms as a work of art; to discuss the idea in a painting is not to intellectualize art.

4. Parallel search for universal in art and philosophy; Cézanne.

B. Fragmentation.

1. Extremes of ultra-naturalism or abstraction: Wassily Kandinsky.

2. Picasso leads choice for abstraction: relevance of this choice.

3. Failure of Picasso (like Sartre, and for similar reasons) to be fully consistent with his choice.

C. Retreat to absurdity.

1. Dada , and Marcel Duchamp: art as absurd.

2. Art followed philosophy but came sooner to logical end.

3. Chance in his art technique as an art theory impossible to practice: Pollock.

II. Music As a Vehicle of Modern Thought

A. Non-resolution and fragmentation: German and French streams.

1. Influence of Beethoven’s last Quartets.

2. Direction and influence of Debussy.

3. Schoenberg’s non-resolution; contrast with Bach.

4. Stockhausen: electronic music and concern with the element of change.

B. Cage: a case study in confusion.

1. Deliberate chance and confusion in Cage’s music.

2. Cage’s inability to live the philosophy of his music.

C. Contrast of music-by-chance and the world around us.

1. Inconsistency of indulging in expression of chaos when we acknowledge order for practical matters like airplane design.

2. Art as anti-art when it is mere intellectual statement, divorced from reality of who people are and the fullness of what the universe is.

III. General Culture As the Vehicle of Modern Thought

A. Propagation of idea of fragmentation in literature.

1. Effect of Eliot’s Wasteland and Picasso’s Demoiselles d’ Avignon

compared; the drift of general culture.

2. Eliot’s change in his form of writing when he became a Christian.

3. Philosophic popularization by novel: Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir.

B. Cinema as advanced medium of philosophy.

1. Cinema in the 1960s used to express Man’s destruction: e.g. Blow-up.

2. Cinema and the leap into fantasy:

The Hour of the Wolf, Belle de Jour, Juliet of the Spirits, The Last Year at Marienbad.

3. Bergman’s inability to live out his philosophy (see Cage): Silence and The Hour of the Wolf.

IV. Only on Christian Base Can Reality Be Faced Squarely

Questions

1. Explain what “fragmentation” means, as discussed by Dr. Schaeffer. What does it result from? Give examples of it.

2. Apart from the fact that modern printing and recording processes made the art and music of the past more accessible than ever before, do you think that the preference of many people for the art and music of the past is related to the matters discussed by Dr. Schaeffer? If so, how?

3. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds… With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.” Emerson wrote this over a century ago. Debate.

4. How far do you think that the opinion of some Christians that one should have nothing to do with philosophy, art and novels is a manifestation of the very fragmentation which is characteristic of modern secular thought? Discuss.

Key Events and Persons

Beethoven’s last Quartets: 1825-26

Claude Monet: 1840-1926

Poplars at Giverny, Sunrise: 1885

Paul Cézanne: 1839-1906

The Bathers: c.1905

Claude Debussy: 1862-1918

Wassily Kandinsky: 1866-1944

Arnold Schoenberg: 1874-1951

Picasso: 1881-1973

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: 1906-7

Marcel Duchamp: 1887-1969

Nude Descending a Staircase: 1912

T.S. Eliot: 1888-1965

The Wasteland: 1922

John Cage: 1912-1992

Music for Marcel Duchamp: 1947

Jackson Pollock: 1912-1956

Karlheinz Stockhausen: 1928-

Sartre’s Nausea: 1938

Beauvoir’s L’Invitée: 1943

Camus’ The Stranger: 1942

Camus’ The Plague: 1947

Resnais’ The Last Year at Marienbad: 1961

Bergman’s The Silence: 1963

Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits: 1965

Antonioni’s Blow-Up: 1966

Bergman’s The Hour of the Wolf: 1967

Buñel’s Belle de Jour: 1967

Further Study

Perhaps you have seen some of the films mentioned. You should try to see them if you haven’t.Watch for them in local art-film festivals, on TV, or in campus film series. They rarely return nowadays to the commercial circuit. The sex and violence which they treated philosophically have now taken over the screen in a more popular and crude form! Easier of access are the philosophic novels of Sartre, Camus and de Beauvoir. Read the titles Dr. Schaeffer mentions. Again, for the artwork and music mentioned, consult libraries and record shops. But spend time here—let the visual images and the musical sounds sink in.

Listening patiently to Cage and Webern, for example, will tell you more than volumes of musicology.

T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland (many editions, usually in collections of his verse).

Joseph Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music (1961).

H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (1970).

Donald J. Drew, Images of Man (1974).

Colin Wilson, The Outsider (1956).

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September 9, 2011 – 6:48 am Categories: Francis Schaeffer | Post a comment

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Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 37)

Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 37)

This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.

Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the  debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”

“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.

August 1, 2011

Rep. Harris Votes Against the Debt Ceiling “Deal” 

Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Andy Harris voted against the debt ceiling increase. The plan did not require passage of a balanced budget amendment, which Rep. Harris feels is essential to bringing permanent common sense accountability to Washington.

“A balanced budget amendment is the only way to make sure the federal government spends what it takes in and lives within its means,” said Rep. Andy Harris.  “Over the past few weeks I have repeatedly voted for reasonable proposals to raise the debt ceiling that included passage of a balanced budget amendment. But I didn’t come to Washington to continue writing blank checks. Maryland’s families and job creators sent me to Congress to permanently change the way Washington does business.  I appreciate Speaker Boehner’s remarkable, historic efforts to craft a proposal to solve the debt ceiling issue.  But today’s debt ceiling deal just doesn’t go far enough to build an environment for job creation by requiring passage of a balanced budget amendment to bring permanent common sense accountability to Washington.”

Currently, the U.S. Government has a national debt of $14.3 trillion and runs an annual deficit of $1.65 trillion.

September 9, 2011 – 12:17 am Categories: spending out of control | Post a comment

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7)

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7)

Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave
Abstract:
Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act followed close behind. Soon other efforts extended governmental activities in all areas of the welfare sector. Growth of governmental welfare activity continued unabated, and today it has reached truly staggering proportions. Travelling in both Britain and the U.S., Milton Friedman points out that though many government welfare programs are well intentioned, they tend to have pernicious side effects. In Dr. Friedman’s view, perhaps the most serious shortcoming of governmental welfare activities is their tendency to strip away individual independence and dignity. This is because bureaucrats in welfare agencies are placed in positions of tremendous power over welfare recipients, exercising great influence over their lives. Because people never spend someone else’s money as carefully as they spend their own, inefficiency, waste, abuse, theft, and corruption are inevitable. In addition, welfare programs tend to be self-perpetuating because they destroy work incentives. Indeed, it is often in the welfare recipients’ best interests to remain unemployed. Dr. Friedman suggests a negative income tax as a way of helping the poor. The government would pay money to people falling below a certain income level. As they obtained jobs and earned money, they would continue to receive some payments from the government until their outside income reached a certain ceiling. This system would make people better off who sought work and earned income. This contrasts with many of today’s programs where one dollar earned means nearly one dollar lost in welfare payments.

Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave
Transcript:
Friedman: After the 2nd World War, New York City authorities retained rent control supposedly to help their poorer citizens. The intentions were good. This in the Bronx was one result.
By the 50’s the same authorities were taxing their citizens. Including those who lived in the Bronx and other devastated areas beyond the East River to subsidize public housing. Another idea with good intentions yet poor people are paying for this, subsidized apartments for the well-to-do. When government at city or federal level spends our money to help us, strange things happen.
The idea that government had to protect us came to be accepted during the terrible years of the Depression. Capitalism was said to have failed. And politicians were looking for a new approach.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a candidate for the presidency. He was governor of New York State. At the governor’s mansion in Albany, he met repeatedly with friends and colleagues to try to find some way out of the Depression. The problems of the day were to be solved by government action and government spending. The measures that FDR and his associates discussed here derived from a long line of past experience. Some of the roots of these measures go back to Bismark’s Germany at the end of the 19th Century. The first modern state to institute old age pensions and other similar measures on the part of government. In the early 20th Century Great Britain followed suit under Lloyd George and Churchill. It too instituted old age pensions and similar plans.
These precursors of the modern welfare state had little effect on practice in the United States. But they did have a very great effect on the intellectuals on the campus like those who gathered here with FDR. The people who met here had little personal experience of the horrors of the Depression but they were confident that they had the solution. In their long discussions as they sat around this fireplace trying to design programs to meet the problems raised by the worst Depression in the history of the United States, they quite naturally drew upon the ideas that were prevalent at the time. The intellectual climate had become one in which it was taken for granted that government had to play a major role in solving the problems in providing what came later to be called Security from Cradle to Grave.
Roosevelt’s first priority after his election was to deal with massive unemployment. A Public Works program was started. The government financed projects to build highways, bridges and dams. The National Recovery Administration was set up to revitalize industry. Roosevelt wanted to see America move into a new era. The Social Security Act was passed and other measures followed. Unemployment benefits, welfare payments, distribution of surplus food. With these measures, of course, came rules, regulations and red tape as familiar today as they were novel then. The government bureaucracy began to grow and it’s been growing ever since.
This is just a small part of the Social Security empire today. Their headquarters in Baltimore has 16 rooms this size. All these people are dispensing our money with the best possible intentions. But at what cost?
In the 50 years since the Albany meetings, we have given government more and more control over our lives and our income. In New York State alone, these government buildings house 11,000 bureaucrats. Administering government programs that cost New York taxpayers 22 billion dollars. At the federal level, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare alone has a budget larger than any government in the world except only Russia and the United States.
Yet these government measures often do not help the people they are supposed to. Richard Brown’s daughter, Helema, needs constant medical attention. She has a throat defect and has to be connected to a breathing machine so that she’ll survive the nights. It’s expensive treatment and you might expect the family to qualify for a Medicaid grant.
Richard Brown: No, I don’t get it, cause I’m not eligible for it. I make a few dollars too much and the salary that I make I can’t afford to really live and to save anything is out of the question. And I mean, I live, we live from payday to payday. I mean literally from payday to payday.
Friedman: His struggle isn’t made any easier by the fact that Mr. Brown knows that if he gave up his job as an orderly at the Harlem Hospital, he would qualify for a government handout. And he’d be better off financially.
Hospital Worker: Mr. Brown, do me a favor please? There is a section patient.
Friedman: It’s a terrible pressure on him. But he is proud of the work that he does here and he’s strong enough to resist the pressure.
Richard Brown: I’m Mr. Brown. Your fully dilated and I’m here to take you to the delivery. Try not to push, please. We want to have a nice sterile delivery.
Friedman: Mr. Brown has found out the hard way that welfare programs destroy an individual’s independence.
Richard Brown: We’ve considered welfare. We went to see, to apply for welfare but, we were told that we were only eligible for $5.00 a month. And, to receive this $5.00 we would have to cash in our son’s savings bonds. And that’s not even worth it. I don’t believe in something for nothing anyway.
Mrs. Brown: I think a lot of people are capable of working and are willing to work, but it’s just the way it is set up. It, the mother and the children are better off if the husband isn’t working or if the husband isn’t there. And this breaks up so many poor families.
Friedman: One of the saddest things is that many of the children whose parents are on welfare will in their turn end up in the welfare trap when they grow up. In this public housing project in the Bronx, New York, 3/4’s of the families are now receiving welfare payments.
Well Mr. Brown wanted to keep away from this kind of thing for a very good reason. The people who get on welfare lose their human independence and feeling of dignity. They become subject to the dictates and whims of their welfare supervisor who can tell them whether they can live here or there, whether they may put in a telephone, what they may do with their lives. They are treated like children, not like responsible adults and they are trapped in the system. Maybe a job comes up which looks better than welfare but they are afraid to take it because if they lose it after a few months it maybe six months or nine months before they can get back onto welfare. And as a result, this becomes a self-perpetuating cycle rather than simply a temporary state of affairs.
Things have gone even further elsewhere. This is a huge mistake. A public housing project in Manchester, England.
Well we’re 3,000 miles away from the Bronx here but you’d never know it just by looking around. It looks as if we are at the same place. It’s the same kind of flats, the same kind of massive housing units, decrepit even though they were only built 7 or 8 years ago. Vandalism, graffiti, the same feeling about the place. Of people who don’t have a great deal of drive and energy because somebody else is taking care of their day to day needs because the state has deprived them of an incentive to find jobs to become responsible people to be the real support for themselves and their families.
September 9, 2011 – 12:09 am Categories: Milton Friedman | Post a comment

Attorney: Ark. weatherman innocent in Maumelle death of Dexter Williams

Today’s THV channel 11 in Little Rock reported:

MAUMELLE, Ark. (AP) – An attorney for a local meteorologist says no foul play was involved in the death of a 24-year-old Mountain Pine man.

Little Rock-based lawyer Mark Hampton said Thursday that KARK meteorologist Brett Cummins is innocent.

Authorities say Cummins and the body of 24-year-old Dexter Williams were found in a jacuzzi at a Maumelle home on Monday. Williams was wearing what appeared to be a dog collar around his neck and according to the police report, the homeowner said they had been doing drugs the night before.

No charges have been filed in Williams’ death. Authorities have questioned Cummins and the homeowner multiple times.

Police have not yet released the preliminary results of Williams’ autopsy. His family says they’re disturbed by the circumstances surrounding his death and added that Williams was easily influenced.

(Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Below are my most recent posts related to the subjects of drugs and alcohol:

Dave Hope and Kerry Livgren of Kansas: Their story of deliverance from drugs

The recent events in Little Rock concerning KARK TV’s top weatherman Brett Cummins and his experience of drinking alcohol and snorting coke has left a lot of people asking questions. Since the evening ended in the tragic death of one of Brett’s friends, Dexter Williams, many questions have centered on the use of illegal drugs. […]

Pictures of Dexter Williams

These are some pictures of Dexter Williams. Unfortunately his life was cut short  while drinking and snorting coke with KARK weatherman Brett Cummins. Dexter Williams (Photo from family) Dexter Paul Williams (facebook photo) Related posts: Pictures of Dexter Williams September 7, 2011 – 10:22 pm These are some pictures of Dexter Williams. Unfortunately his life was […]

You tube video “Cocaine is a hell of a drug” about Brett Cummins

Youtube video about Brett Cummins story posted. TV weatherman awakens in hot tub next to naked dead man with ‘dog collar’ around his neck after drug and alcohol-fueled party   By Thomas Durante Last updated at 7:24 PM on 7th September 2011 It may be part of his job to predict when a storm is […]

Brett Cummins turns to drugs instead of God

Brett Cummins has risen to be the top tv weatherman in the evening at KARK News 4. However, something is missing in his life. (I wish Brett would just take the time to read the story by Marvin A. McMickle | Senior Pastor, Antioch Baptist Church, Cleveland, Ohio at the end of this post). I […]

The sad case of Brett Cummins: Alcohol takes another victim jh14c

Brett Cummins and his friends were drinking heavily and taking drugs on Sunday night and all three of them went to sleep under the influence of alcohol and drugs and only 2 of them woke  up.  This reminds me of a few verses from the Old Testament. (There is hope. Check out the video interviews of Kerry Livgren […]

Picture of Dexter Williams with link to full police report

This is a link to the full police report. (There is hope. Check out the video interviews of Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of the rock band Kansas.  Also check out an excellent paper by Marvin McMickle on the meaning of the song “I can’t get no satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones and where to find the satisfaction.) Dexter […]

KARK Brett Cummins was “snorting…illegal narcotics…” according to friend jh13c

Details concerning what happened are coming out now. It seems that KARK can no longer ignore the fact that Cummins was snorting coke. (There is hope, check out testimony of one who has been delivered from drugs and alcohol and his name is Marvin.)Here is a Democrat-Gazette article on the incident: Man, 24, found dead in […]

Statement from KARK does not mention drug use of Brett Cummins

Brett Cummins was snorting coke but you could never tell it from this statement from KARK: KARK-TV anchor Bob Clausen said on the air today, “Our meteorologist Brett Cummins was at the home at the time of the death and we felt we should share this with you our viewers. Brett will not be on […]

September 8, 2011 – 7:54 pm Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

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Ron “Pigpen” McKernan of the Grateful Dead didn’t survive but Barry McGuire did (jh17c)

Drugs and alcohol have always been a pitfall that many of the wealthy fall into. We see rock bands that become famous have lots of temptations thrown their way and many fall into these traps. Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Barry McGuire fell into these traps. One joined the “27 Club” and the other left the drugs behind when he put his faith in Christ.

In light of the horrible tragedy in Little Rock on Sunday with the death of a young man of 24 years of age, I wanted to warn other young people of the dangers of alcohol and drugs.

Below is a post I did a few weeks ago and I will follow it with more links to recent posts I have done concerning drugs and alcohol.

You have to drink a lot to develop cirrhosis at the age of 27. And unfortunately, singer and keyboard player McKernan, one of the founders of the Grateful Dead, drank a lot. Before his death, Pigpen was the definitive embodiment of the original, slapdash, wasted blues incarnation of the Dead, before psychedelia and experimental proficiency became their defining element. He helped form the group, but was surpassed in musical ability by later recruits. Even before he died, he represented a throwback to "the way things used to be" for fans to argue over — not unlike his fellow 27 clubber Brian Jones was for the Rolling Stones. (AP Photo)

You have to drink a lot to develop cirrhosis at the age of 27. And unfortunately, singer and keyboard player McKernan, one of the founders of the Grateful Dead, drank a lot. Before his death, Pigpen was the definitive embodiment of the original, slapdash, wasted blues incarnation of the Dead, before psychedelia and experimental proficiency became their defining element. He helped form the group, but was surpassed in musical ability by later recruits. Even before he died, he represented a throwback to “the way things used to be” for fans to argue over — not unlike his fellow 27 clubber Brian Jones was for the Rolling Stones.

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Amy Winehouse and the ‘Forever 27 Club’

Saturday, the first news headline I saw was:  “Amy Winehouse found dead at 27”.  For some reason, it felt a little more crippling that it was supposed to.

“It was a long-time coming”, is what most say (someone won an iPod by predicting the date on the website whenwillamywinehousedie.com) and maybe it was a long-time coming, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that however you look at it, the music industry has lost a really good singer and one of the most influential artists of the late part of this decade;  Lost a voice that embodied what Motown legends were made of;  And essentially, if you believe in the oddidy of the so-called Forever 27 Club – we lost another talented musician to the club of dead rock stars — those that never lived to see 28.  An age we cautiously outgrow, thinking of their fated (and un-fated) deaths at least once during the age of our own 27th year of life.

Essentially speaking, “27” seems to be rock and roll’s most unlucky number.  Sure there are those who have passed at this age due to overdoeses and drug addictions and battles with depression,  it’s the age that as we all know now took Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and now the second female in the club, Amy Winehouse.

There are more members of the Forever 27 Club;  some died because of medical conditions, car accidents and just plain, weird occurrences, and tragedies.  Any way you look at it, it is weird that so many musicians can’t seem to make it to the age of 28.  Other members of the Forever 27 Club include:  Ron “Pigpen” McKernan of the Grateful Dead, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Chris Bell of Big Star, even Robert Johnson a famous blues musician died at 27, cited for unknown reasons.

The creepiness of the amount of rock stars that die at this age poses the question, what about the age of 27 has put so many rock stars into the ground?  Is it behavior we expect from them (abusing drugs and alcohol, making bad decisions, driving drunk, getting on small planes?).  Is 27 an exceptionally hard age to live through when you are that famous (mine was a good year, but I am not famous)?  Or is it a question of just wanting more and more and more.  Twenty-seven is an age, after all that is old enough to be an adult, but still not old enough to understand the world. Although I am not sure that has happened to me yet, and I am 31.

For Amy Winehouse, the tragedy of being part of the Forever 27 Club means not having to slide into a vauge mediocre music choices to keep up with the wretched”singers” who would outsell her lovely, husky sound with computer generated vocals and gyrated movements with snakes and backup dancers.

In her death, she has left us with a small collection of music to take from — all beautiful, all tragic and all for us to keep our arms tight around.  From her two Cd’s she inspired a sound that made music a little better, if only for a little while.  Her sound brought out the funk and beat of a broken heart in a time when hipster, gothic, hang-yourself love songs were topping the charts, paving the way for singers like Adele, Cee Lo Green and Bruno Mars to get a little funky with broken hearts.

You can hear her fate in the song that made her a household name, “Rehab,” a smart, self-aware song about her struggle with going to get help for drinking, drugs and depression.  A fight she would essentially lose.

Winehouse sounded wise and wounded beyond her years. And like Cobain, Hendrix and Joplin, Amy Winehouse’s music had a sense of strength and purpose that she — and they — failed to summon in their own lives.

I hope when I get to the pearly gates one day, I am greeted by the “Forever 27’s”, heaven’s best band ever.  Well, either them…or the Beatles.

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Members of the Grateful Dead are pictured in this 1969 photo. After thirty years of making music, the Grateful Dead, once the house band of the 1960s counterculture, is breaking up. The move came four months after the death of its founder and guiding spirit, Jerry Garcia. From left in the back row are, Tom Constanten, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzman, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and Phil Lesh. Jerry Garcia, left, and Mickey Hart, right, are in the front row. (AP Photo) // The ‘Forever 27’ Club: Rock stars dead at 27 (AP Photo)

Larger image

AP Photo

Members of the Grateful Dead are pictured in this 1969 photo. After thirty years of making music, the Grateful Dead, once the house band of the 1960s counterculture, is breaking up. The move came four months after the death of its founder and guiding spirit, Jerry Garcia. From left in the back row are, Tom Constanten, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzman, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Phil Lesh. Jerry Garcia, left, and Mickey Hart, right, are in the front row. (AP Photo)

The keyboardist, singer and harmonica player from The Grateful Dead died in 1973 from a stomach hemorrhage as a result of years of heavy drinking.

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Musician Barry McGuire’s Testimony: Eve of Destruction

When I was a little boy, my grandmother told me something I’ve never forgotten. I was probably about five, maybe six years old. She used to take care of me during the day when my mom worked. One day she said to me, ‘you know, Barry, one day when you grow up, you’re gonna know the truth, and the truth is gonna set you free.’ Now, I didn’t know that came out of the Bible. I didn’t even know there was a Bible. I was just a little kid. My grandmother told me that. And I knew she loved me, and boy, I knew I loved her. And when I grew up, sure enough, I wanted to be free. I mean who doesn’t want to be free? And certainly, a lie has never set anyone free. So if anything was gonna set me free, it had to be the truth.

Eve of Destruction was written by 19-year-old songwriter P. F. Sloan in 1965 and eventually became Barry McGuire’s one and only big Billboard chart hit song.

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And along came the 60s. And boy, I was the right age at the right time in the wrong place, you might say. And hey, I wanted to be free. Boy, I sang ‘Eve of Destruction’ lookin’ to be free. I went to Broadway. I did a show on Broadway called HAIR. I played the male lead in the original Broadway cast, lookin’ to be free. And the very lifestyle that we were promoting was killing us all. I looked around me I saw my friends, one, two, three at a time goin’ down: drug overdose, suicide, sexually transmitted diseases.

So I left Broadway, I came back out to California. And I was livin’ with a friend of mine, Denny Doherty, up on the Appian Way. And he used to joke and tease me, ’cause I was still lookin’ for truth, and every time a new teacher or sage or somebody, Meyer Baba, Sai Baba, Hadji Baba, any Baba would do, I mean I was down there in the front row, ya know, ‘Humna Baba, lay the truth on me, man!’ I was hummin’ and bobbin’ and goin’ for it. And Denny says, ‘Ah, you belong to the Guru of the Month Club.’ I mean, anybody, I didn’t care. If they had a word, I was down there tryin’ to learn the truth. And they said a lot of things that were true, but I just couldn’t somehow get it right inside of me.

And I was just about to give up, and one day I went over to a friend’s house, Eric Hord. He used to be the lead guitar player for The Mamas and Papas, and he always had a big bowl of marijuana under his coffee table. And man, I had this bowl out that morning; I had three papers glued together. I figured he’s only gonna lay one joint on me, so I’ll make the biggest one I can roll. And I look down on this particular day, there’s a little paper back book layin’ on the table next to the grass, and it’s called Good News for Modern Man. And I thought, ‘Hey, I’m a modern man. I could use some good news.’ I mean, everybody was dyin’ all around me. So I took the book home with me, didn’t know what it was. I got by myself, opened it up, and right on the first flyleaf page in the book it says, ‘The New Testament in Modern English.’ I got so angry. ‘Ah, look at this! Them Jesus Freaks, man! They’re diguisin’ the Bible!’ Threw it on the floor, I didn’t wanna read the Bible! Give me a break! And it laid there for days. I was hopin’ someone would come along and throw it away. I didn’t wanna throw it away, ’cause I knew what it was, the Bible, and just in case, you don’t wanna be responsible. Who knows? But it laid there for days, weeks, and months actually. I mean, when somethin’ hit the floor in my house; the next person to pick it up was an archaeologist. I mean, that was some future dig.

And I was there one day by myself. And there this little book somehow kept surfacing above the trash. And the wind was blowing through the window catching the pages. It was flickin’ its pages, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick. ‘Read me!’ it said to me. And truthfully, just out of bored, sarcastic curiosity, I picked up The Life and Times of Jesus Christ. And for the first time in my life, I stopped looking at Christians; I stopped looking at denominations, organizations, Catholics, Protestants, ya know, all this stuff that goes on in His name. And I took a look at Him, examined what He had to say. How He treated His personal friends. What He had to say to the people in the street, the alcoholics, the prostitutes, the homosexuals, the thieves, liars, and robbers. What he had to say about the military people, the political leaders, and the spiritual leaders (which is about the scariest thing he had to say to anybody). How He treated the little children when they came around. And everything that Jesus had to say, as I put it to the test against what I knew to be true through my own life experience, I couldn’t find anything wrong with His words. There’s no double meaning, no hidden agenda. It was all out front. And then He said thirteen words that changed my life, because I saw this was the answer to my personal eve of destruction. He said, ‘Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as your self.’

How simple can it get? And I realized that if all of us in the whole world lived according to those two simple instructions — I don’t care what your concept of God is, you could be a Buddhist, you could be B’hai, you could be, ya know, whatever it is, Christian, just your concept of God — love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as your self, and our world would change. How simple can it get? We wouldn’t need a police force anymore, and we wouldn’t need armies and navies and prisons and welfare systems. We wouldn’t need lawyers and politicians. Two simple pieces of instruction: Love God with all my heart, and love my neighbor as my self.

And I wanted to be like Jesus. I thought, ‘Man, this is my guy!’ But I didn’t wanna be a Christian, see. I wanted to be like Him, but I didn’t wanna be like all them. I thought if I said yes to Jesus I’d have to get a powder blue leisure suit — remember those? — White shoes, ya know, walk around smilin’ a lot. I couldn’t do that.

But then I wrestled with it for nearly a year. And one day I was up just off Mulholland Drive in Stone Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. And I’m bangin’ my head on the wall, my friends are all smokin’ dope, eating peyote, psilocybin, ya know, drinkin’ champagne and orange juice. And I’m over in the corner; I can’t have fun anymore. See, once you’ve been busted by the truth, you’ve been busted. You can’t fake it anymore. You can’t go around sayin’, ‘Well, who really knows?’ ‘Cause you really know. You don’t wanna know. But I knew. Jesus is the Lamb of God. His death paid my karmic debt. See, I had a debt I couldn’t pay. I had debt I could not pay. I mean, I’m a murderer, I’m a liar, I’m a thief, I’m everything you’re not supposed to be. I did it all. One time I was doing a newspaper interview, and the reporter said, ‘Well, what did you do?’ I said, ‘Well, ya know the Ten Commandments?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I broke ’em. All of ’em. A lot.’

That’s what I did. And that’s what we all did. And there has to be justice. How could God not allow justice to be? He couldn’t just arbitrarily say, ‘that’s okay, Barry. You’re forgiven.’ And Jesus said, ‘I will go. I will satisfy the demands of justice on his behalf.’ And now the Bible says if I should stumble, if I should sin, it says God is faithful and just. You know what that justice cost? It cost Jesus’ life. And He did that for me, He did that for you, He did that for every person that’s gonna ever hear these words. So that I could be forgiven and truly, truly be free. That happened in 1971. I fell on my face on the floor of that house in Stone Canyon. I said, ‘God, I don’t know why, how; if I wake up alive tomorrow I’ll follow You wherever You lead me.’ And within a week I was on a Greyhound bus out of Hollywood, and I’ve never looked back, except in awe and wonder at how He revealed Himself to me in my state of mind at that time.”

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If you feel that your life feels incomplete or unsatisfying, please follow this link:
What is purpose of life?

Below are my most recent posts related to the subjects of drugs and alcohol:

Dave Hope and Kerry Livgren of Kansas: Their story of deliverance from drugs

The recent events in Little Rock concerning KARK TV’s top weatherman Brett Cummins and his experience of drinking alcohol and snorting coke has left a lot of people asking questions. Since the evening ended in the tragic death of one of Brett’s friends, Dexter Williams, many questions have centered on the use of illegal drugs. […]

Pictures of Dexter Williams

These are some pictures of Dexter Williams. Unfortunately his life was cut short  while drinking and snorting coke with KARK weatherman Brett Cummins. Dexter Williams (Photo from family) Dexter Paul Williams (facebook photo) Related posts: Pictures of Dexter Williams September 7, 2011 – 10:22 pm These are some pictures of Dexter Williams. Unfortunately his life was […]

You tube video “Cocaine is a hell of a drug” about Brett Cummins

Youtube video about Brett Cummins story posted. TV weatherman awakens in hot tub next to naked dead man with ‘dog collar’ around his neck after drug and alcohol-fueled party   By Thomas Durante Last updated at 7:24 PM on 7th September 2011 It may be part of his job to predict when a storm is […]

Brett Cummins turns to drugs instead of God

Brett Cummins has risen to be the top tv weatherman in the evening at KARK News 4. However, something is missing in his life. (I wish Brett would just take the time to read the story by Marvin A. McMickle | Senior Pastor, Antioch Baptist Church, Cleveland, Ohio at the end of this post). I […]

The sad case of Brett Cummins: Alcohol takes another victim jh14c

Brett Cummins and his friends were drinking heavily and taking drugs on Sunday night and all three of them went to sleep under the influence of alcohol and drugs and only 2 of them woke  up.  This reminds me of a few verses from the Old Testament. (There is hope. Check out the video interviews of Kerry Livgren […]

Picture of Dexter Williams with link to full police report

This is a link to the full police report. (There is hope. Check out the video interviews of Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of the rock band Kansas.  Also check out an excellent paper by Marvin McMickle on the meaning of the song “I can’t get no satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones and where to find the satisfaction.) Dexter […]

KARK Brett Cummins was “snorting…illegal narcotics…” according to friend jh13c

Details concerning what happened are coming out now. It seems that KARK can no longer ignore the fact that Cummins was snorting coke. (There is hope, check out testimony of one who has been delivered from drugs and alcohol and his name is Marvin.)Here is a Democrat-Gazette article on the incident: Man, 24, found dead in […]

Statement from KARK does not mention drug use of Brett Cummins

Brett Cummins was snorting coke but you could never tell it from this statement from KARK: KARK-TV anchor Bob Clausen said on the air today, “Our meteorologist Brett Cummins was at the home at the time of the death and we felt we should share this with you our viewers. Brett will not be on […]

September 8, 2011 – 4:08 pm Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

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Responding to Oppenneimer and Lizza:Defending Francis Schaeffer’s influence on believers such as Michele Bachmann(Part 7)

Both Oppenneimer and Lizza have attacked Francis Schaeffer’s view, but the way to know his views best is to take time to watch his film series. I said that in my first post and I will continue to show all ten episodes of his film series “How should we then live?”

This is a series of posts concerning presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her religious beliefs. Particularly I will be looking at the identity of Francis Schaeffer who Michele said had major impact on her views. I also would say that Francis Schaeffer was the greatest christian philosopher of the 20th century.

In 1979 I first watched the film series “How should we then live?” and it was so impressive to me that I returned to my high school with permission from my former teacher to view the series again. In fact, Mr. Brink would tell the seniors at Evangelical Christian School in  Cordova, TN something to this affect: “I hope you realize how important this film series by Dr. Francis Schaeffer is. Here we have Everette Hatcher who is in college now, but he is coming back to see this film again because he knows how valuable it is.”

The best way to understand Michele Bachmann’s worldview is to watch the film series “How should we then live?” by Francis Schaeffer. I have provided a 30 minute episode at the end of this post with a written outline.  In this film series the humanist worldview is seen as weak because it is not able to give adequate answers to life’s tough questions while the christian worldview can.  Humanism has a finite base because it is limited to finite man while the Christian worldview is based on information provided by the infinite-personal God of the Bible.

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E P I S O D E 7

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer

10 Worldview and Truth

Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act on his belief that we live in a closed system that was produced by chance with no God. Therefore, man’s only alternative is to look to chance and nonreason for our search for meaning in life and for moral guidance. Schaeffer rightly points out “With what Christ and the Bible teach, Man can have life instead of death—in having knowledge that is more than finite Man can have from himself.”

T h e AGE OF NON-REASON

I. Optimism Of Older Humanist Philosophers:

The unity and true knowledge of reality defined as starting from Man alone.

II. Shift in Modern Philosophy

A. Eighteenth century as the vital watershed.

B. Rousseau: ideas and influence.

1. Rousseau and autonomous freedom.

2. Personal freedom and social necessity clash in Rousseau.

3. Rousseau’s influence.

a) Robespierre and the ideology of the Terror.

b) Gauguin, natural freedom, and disillusionment.

C. DeSade: If nature is the absolute, cruelty equals non-cruelty.

D. Impossible tension between autonomous freedom and autonomous reasons conclusion that the universe and people are a part of the total cosmic machine.

E. Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard and their followers sought for a unity but they did not solve the problem.

1. After these men and their followers, there came an absolute break between the area of meaning and values, and the area of reason.

2. Now humanistic philosophy sees reason as always leading to pessimism; any hope of optimism lies in non-reason.

III. Existentialism and Non-Reason

A. French existentialism.

1. Total separation of reason and will: Sartre.

2. Not possible to live consistently with this position.

B. German existentialism.

1. Jaspers and the “final experience.”

2. Heidegger and angst.

C. Influence of existentialism.

1. As a formal philosophy it is declining.

2. As a generalized attitude it dominates modern thought.

IV. Forms of Popularization of Nonrational Experience

A. Drug experience.

1. Aldous Huxley and “truth inside one’s head.”

2. Influence of rock groups in spreading the drug culture; psychedelic rock.

B. Eastern religious experience: from the drug trip to the Eastern religious trip.

C. The occult as a basis for “hope” in the area of non-reason.

V. Theological Liberalism and Existentialism

A. Preparation for theological existentialism.

1. Renaissance’s attempt to “synthesize” Greek philosophers and Christianity; religious liberals’ attempt to “synthesize” Enlightenment and Christianity.

2. Religious liberals denied supernatural but accepted reason.

3. Schweitzer’s demolition of liberal aim to separate the natural from the supernatural in the New Testament.

B. Theological existentialism.

1. Intellectual failure of rationalist theology opened door to theological existentialism.

2. Barth brought the existential methodology into theology.

a) Barth’s teaching led to theologians who said that the Bible is not true in the areas of science and history, but they nevertheless look for a religious experience from it.

b) For many adherents of this theology, the Bible does not give absolutes in regard to what is right or wrong in human behavior.

3. Theological existentialism as a cul-de-sac.

a) If Bible is divorced from its teaching concerning the cosmos and history, its values can’t be applied to a historic situation in either morals or law; theological pronouncements about morals or law are arbitrary.

b) No way to explain evil or distinguish good from evil. Therefore, these theologians are in same position as Hindu philosophers (as illustrated by Kali).

c) Tillich, prayer as reflection, and the deadness of “god.”

d) Religious words used for manipulation of society.

VI. Conclusion

With what Christ and the Bible teach, Man can have life instead of death—in having knowledge that is more than finite Man can have from himself.

Questions

1. What is the difference between theologians and philosophers of the rationalist tradition and those of the existentialist tradition?

2. “If the early church had embraced an existentialist theology, it would have been absorbed into the Roman pantheon.” It didn’t. Why not?

3. “It is true that existentialist theology is foreign to biblical religion. But biblical religion was the product of a particular culture and, though useful for societies in the same cultural stream, it is no longer suitable for an age in which an entire range of world cultures requires a common religious denominator. Religious existentialism provides that, without losing the universal instinct for the holy.” Study this statement carefully. What assumptions are betrayed by it?

4. Can you isolate attitudes and tendencies in yourself, your church, and your community which reflect the “existentialist methodology” described by Dr. Schaeffer?

Key Events and Persons

Rousseau: 1712-1778

Kant: 1724-1804

Marquis de Sade: 1740-1814

The Social Contract: 1762

Hegel: 1770-1831

Kierkegaard: 1813-1855

Paul Gauguin: 1848-1903

Whence, What Whither?: 1897-1898

Albert Schweitzer: 1875-1965

Quest for the Historical Jesus: 1906

Karl Jaspers: 1883-1969

Paul Tillich: 1886-1965

Karl Barth: 1886-1968

Martin Heidegger: 1889-1976

Aldous Huxley: 1894-1963

J.P. Sartre: 1905-1980

Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper: 1967

Further Study

Unless already familiar with them, take time to listen to the Beatles’ records, as well as to discs put out by other groups at the time.

Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942).

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954).

Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762).

J.P. Sartre, Nausea (1938).

Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (1952).

Following Rousseau, the exaggeration of the delights and the pathos of nature and experience which marks Romanticism may be sampled in, for example, Wordsworth’s poems, Casper David Friedrich’s paintings, and Schubert’s songs.

J.G. Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation (1968).

J.W. von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1962).

Erich Heller, The Disinherited Mind (1952).

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September 8, 2011 – 4:06 pm Categories: Francis Schaeffer | Post a comment

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Video of Republican Debate of Sept 7, 2011

I got this off the internet. I don’t agree with the comments below. For instance, I do think that Security is a Ponzi scheme.

Uploaded by on Sep 8, 2011

Who do you think stood out the most as a leader in this debate? Share you thoughts on http://www.postingsplus.com, a new political social network.

“The reviews are in of last night’s Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library. The short of it is that the debate was all about Texas Gov. Rick Perry — the newest in the field and presumed “front runner” — and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Our friend Frank James at It’s All Politics has analysis. But here’s what others are saying this morning:

— Politico’s top take-away is that Perry has now emerged as the “clear frontrunner”: The Texas governor got the most questions from questioners Brian Williams and John Harris, but he also absorbed the most punches from his competitors. When all the energy is concentrated in one direction, it underscores who is dominating the field – and last night it was Perry who was at the center of attention. Perry himself acknowledged the focus on him, saying at one point, “I feel a bit like a pinata.”

— The conservative National Review polled experts after the debate and the views were mixed to say the least.

Hadley Arkes, a professor of jurisprudence at Amherst College, wrote that the debate brought out one thing of importance for him. “Rick Perry persuaded me that he was not scary, and that he won’t be seen as scary by the vast public,” he wrote.

Republican media consultant Alex Castellanos could not disagree more: He said that during the debate Perry stuck to his claims that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and that is “scary stuff for seniors.”

— The New Republic’s John B. Judis makes the case that Perry will be the Republican nominee, saying he “appeared tough, confident, able to deflect criticism, and to fire back when fired upon.”

Here’s what he said about Romney: Romney is the Nelson Rockefeller of today’s Republican party. Rockefeller, elected four times as governor of New York, was one of the most able politicians in America, but he was too liberal for the Republican party of his time. He backed civil rights and the welfare state, he was a big spender, he was pro-union. And he was also divorced. He might have won the presidency in 1960 or 1968, but he could never win the Republican nomination for president.

— Not everyone jumped on the Perry bandwagon. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza gave the night to Romney: … Romney showed his experience and steadied himself as the proceedings wore on — repeatedly giving answers that sounded reasonable and, dare we say it, presidential. Romney continues to execute his strategy: focus on President Obama and the economy while avoiding too much back and forth with his Republican rivals. It worked (again) tonight.

— The New York Times’ Nate Silver concurred. He scored Perry’s performance a B-minus and gave Romney an A-minus. He called Perry’s “Ponzi scheme” remark “unwise” saying, “This particular remark is not likely to sit exceptionally well even with Republicans, conservative though they may be. A CNN poll published last month found 57 percent of Republicans opposed to major changes in Social Security and Medicare.” – NPR

FACTCHECKS on statements from the Reagan Library Debate:
– http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2011/09/08/2011-09-08_gop_debate_in_…
– http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2011/09/factcheck-statemen…
– http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/fact-checking-the-gop-d…

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September 8, 2011 – 4:04 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Post a comment

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Responding to Oppenneimer and Lizza:Defending Francis Schaeffer’s influence on believers such as Michele Bachmann(Part 6)

Both Oppenneimer and Lizza have attacked Francis Schaeffer’s view, but the way to know his views best is to take time to watch his film series. I said that in my first post and I will continue to show all ten episodes of his film series “How should we then live?”

This is a series of posts concerning presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her religious beliefs. Particularly I will be looking at the identity of Francis Schaeffer who Michele said had major impact on her views. I also would say that Francis Schaeffer was the greatest christian philosopher of the 20th century.

In 1979 I first watched the film series “How should we then live?” and it was so impressive to me that I returned to my high school with permission from my former teacher to view the series again. In fact, Mr. Brink would tell the seniors at Evangelical Christian School in  Cordova, TN something to this affect: “I hope you realize how important this film series by Dr. Francis Schaeffer is. Here we have Everette Hatcher who is in college now, but he is coming back to see this film again because he knows how valuable it is.”

The best way to understand Michele Bachmann’s worldview is to watch the film series “How should we then live?” by Francis Schaeffer. I have provided a 30 minute episode at the end of this post with a written outline.  In this film series the humanist worldview is seen as weak because it is not able to give adequate answers to life’s tough questions while the christian worldview can.  Humanism has a finite base because it is limited to finite man while the Christian worldview is based on information provided by the infinite-personal God of the Bible.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey
I often tease my friend who will run for president some day that our friendship will end up costing him dearly. Reporters will dig up our connection and will explain what a freak I am and how that disqualifies him to be president. That’s kind of how it goes now if you run for office, apparently, no matter where you fall politically.

We see this kind of guilt by association throughout a new piece on Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) from The New Yorker, a much talked-about profile that includes some bizarre connections and strange inferences.

Apparently this is the week for targeting Bachmann, as there is much talk about the notorious Newseek cover, which we’ll deal with in a later post. Some of you may resonate with Slate’s Jessica Grose when she says, “I hate it when Michele Bachmann makes me defend her,” but hold on to your hats for a Leblancian edit (bolded phrases are my own) of the religion-related parts of New Yorker’s smear by Ryan Lizza.

Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians.

Oh really? What’s his basis for this claim?

Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared. Bachmann said in 2004 that being gay is “personal enslavement,” and that, if same-sex marriage were legalized, “little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and that perhaps they should try it.”

Bachmann wasn’t the first to consider sin enslavement, even if you might agree or disagree with her interpretation. How does Lizza know that her campaign will be focus on a set of beliefs? Is the media making this the focus?

…The trip [to Israel] gave her a connection to Israel, a state whose creation, many American evangelicals believe, is prophesied in the Bible. (St. Paul, in the Letter to the Romans, says that Jews will one day gather again in their homeland; modern fundamentalists see this, along with the coming of the Antichrist, as presaging the Rapture.)

Who are modern fundamentalists and what do they have to do with Bachmann? Is there any evidence that Bachmann holds the idea of pretribulation, midtribulation, or posttribulation rapture? Or maybe she’s postmillennial or even amillennial.

These ideas get complex, so things get muddy while trying to summarize an entire belief system on eschatology in a paragraph when the reporter doesn’t offer evidence for those beliefs.

In the fall of 1975, Bachmann enrolled at Winona State University, a small school in southeastern Minnesota, where she became more devout and tried to lead her dormmates to Christianity.

Regular readers know we hate the d-word. And, of course, part of being an evangelical often means evangelism, so this isn’t exactly breaking news or terribly unusual.

Then the reporter examines the beliefs of the late Francis Schaeffer, who was kind of a big deal for many evangelicals. Now, Bachmann has said before that Schaeffer has strongly influenced her views, so the association here makes sense. What’s strange is how the reporter portrays him as fringe. Here’s the reporter’s explanation for part of a video Schaeffer produced.

In the sixth episode, a mysterious man in a fake mustache drives around in a white van and furtively pours chemicals into a city’s water supply, while Schaeffer speculates about the possibility that the U.S. government is controlling its citizens by means of psychotropic drugs.

How much of that video consisted of speculation? Is there any indication that Bachmann holds this belief?

Lizza uses Schaeffer’s son Frank to explain his father’s beliefs, but he should at least acknowledge that Frank has also taken his own ideological shift. For example, Frank recently blamed the shootings in Norway on conservative evangelicals and warns that evangelicals could be planning similar attacks in the U.S. Hmm.

In 1981, three years before he died, Schaeffer published “A Christian Manifesto,” a guide for Christian activism, in which he argues for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe v. Wade isn’t reversed.

I’ll defer to Ben Domenech.

… I find this depiction of Schaeffer’s position is just a vicious smear.

What Schaeffer called for were acts of civil disobedience if Roe v. Wade was not overturned. He repeatedly and specifically stressed that violence was not justified – “overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence”, he wrote.

Oops. You don’t have to agree with Schaeffer to wonder whether he is unfairly maligned in this piece. The reporter then jumps to Bachmann time at Oral Roberts’ former law school.

For several years, the school could not get accreditation, because students were required to sign a “code of honor” attesting to their Christian belief and commitment.

Does anyone know whether this is really the reason why the school couldn’t get accredited? This surprises me, considering that lots and lots of colleges that have variations on a religious “code of honor” are accredited (BYU anyone?).

The law review published essays by Schaeffer and Rousas John Rushdoony, a prominent Dominionist who has called for a pure Christian theocracy in which Old Testament law—execution for adulterers and homosexuals, for example—would be instituted.

Here are more attempts to prove guilt by association. I’m guess that, for example, our friend Mr. Brad Greenberg does not believe everything a professors who write for a law review from UCLA produces, but maybe he does. Did the law review publish essays calling to execute homosexuals and adulterers? Did she believe these claims in any way?

Lizza quotes professor John Eidsmoe whom Bachmann worked for at Oral Roberts (ORU).

When I asked him if he believed that Bachmann’s views were fully consistent with the prevailing ideology at O.R.U. and the themes of his book, he said, “Yes.” Later, he added, “I do not know of any way in which they are not.”

That’s a pretty generic question he’s answering. It doesn’t get into if she believes in criminalizing adultery or homosexuality, which seems to insinuate. Then Lizza touches on Bachmann’s foster parenting.

Bachmann’s motivation seems to have been to save the girls, in the same way that she had been saved.

Again, not terribly shocking for a Christian foster parent, but even if this was her motivation, how she did this would be more relevant. Is there any evidence that she coerced the children in any way?

In the late nineteen-nineties, William Cooper, a wealthy bank executive and conservative activist, became chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, and started to demand more ideological purity. “He began a purge of people like me,” Laidig said. “No abortion, so if your daughter is raped or if you find out your child is going to be permanently a vegetable you have the kid. Not every abortion is birth control, O.K.? So really hard-core stuff.”

Maybe he did, but did this Republican leader really want to “purge” people that supported abortion in cases of rape and if child is a permanent “vegetable?” How does this apply to Bachmann?

Here’s another journalist using guilt by association with a very tenuous basis on reality to take shots. I could go on and on about the problems in the piece and how it could have been improved, but for now, we’ll ponder why these sections weren’t edited more thoroughly.

Pieces like this do little to illuminate Bachmann’s beliefs or how they apply to her policy stances, but NPR doesn’t mind highlighting it (audio will be available later today). Better watch out who you’re friending on Facebook. You never know what they said 20 years ago that will come back to haunt you in your next job interview.

Written by: Sarah Pulliam Bailey on August 9, 2011

I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in Modern Science. A. Change in conviction from earlier modern scientists.B. From an open to a closed natural system: elimination of belief in a Creator.1. Closed system derives not from the findings of science but from philosophy.2. Now there is no place for the significance of Man, for morals, or for love.C. Darwin taught that all life evolved through the survival of the fittest.1. Serious problems inherent in Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism.

This is probably one of the most important episodes in the series.

The Scientific Age

Uploaded by  on Oct 3, 2011

T h e

SCIENTIFIC AGE

I. Church Attacks on Copernican Science Were Philosophical

Galileo’s and Copernicus’ works did not contradict the Bible but the elements of Aristotle’s teaching which had entered the Church.

II. Examples of Biblical Influence

A. Pascal’s work.

1. First successful barometer; great writing of French prose.

2. Understood Man’s uniqueness: Man could contemplate, and Man had value to God.

B. Newton

1. Speed of sound and gravity.

2. For Newton and the other early scientists, no problem concerning the why, because they began with the existence of a personal God who had created the universe.

C. Francis Bacon

1. Stressed careful observation and systematic collection of information.

2. Bacon and the other early scientists took the Bible seriously, including its teaching concerning history and the cosmos.

D. Faraday

1. Crowning discovery was the induction of the electric current.

2. As a Christian, believed God’s Creation is for all men to understand and enjoy, not just for a scientific elite.

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Francis Schaeffer- How Should We Then Live? -6- The Scientific Age

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY0e-_jvWg8

III. Scientific Aspects of Biblical Influence

A. Oppenheimer and Whitehead: biblical foundations of scientific revolution.

B. Not all early scientists individually Christian, but all lived within Christian thought forms. This gave a base for science to continue and develop.

C. The contrast between Christian-based science and Chinese and Arab science.

D. Christian emphasis on an ordered Creation reflects nature of reality and is therefore acted upon in all cultures, regardless of what they say their world view is.

1. Einstein’s theory of relativity does not imply relative universe.

2. Man acts on assumption of order, whether he likes it or not.

3. Master idea of biblical science.

a) Uniformity of natural causes in an open system: cause and effect works, but God and Man not trapped in a process.

b) All that exists is not a total cosmic machine.

c) Human choices therefore have meaning and effect.

d) The cosmic machine and the machines people make therefore not a threat.

IV. Shift in Modern Science

A. Change in conviction from earlier modern scientists.

B. From an open to a closed natural system: elimination of belief in a Creator.

1. Closed system derives not from the findings of science but from philosophy.

2. Now there is no place for the significance of Man, for morals, or for love.

C. Darwin taught that all life evolved through the survival of the fittest.

1. Serious problems inherent in Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism.

2. Extension of natural selection to society, politics and ethnics.

D. Natural selection and Nazi ideology.

E. The new authoritarianism: not the crudely dictatorial regimes of Hitler and Stalin. New regimes will be subtly manipulative, based on sophisticated arsenal of new techniques now available.

1. To obtain organs for transplants forces acceptance of new definition of death. Possible abuses.

2. Without the absolute line which Christianity gives of the total uniqueness of Man, people have no boundary line between what they can do and what they should do.

3. Moral and legal implications of Artificial Insemination by Donor (A.I.D.)

4. Skinner’s social psychology and the abolition of Man.

5. Tell people they are machines and they will tend to act accordingly.

6. Each theory of conditioning leads to social application.

a) Koestler: tranquilizer to cure human aggression.

b) Clark and Lee: controlling aggressions of politicians.

c) Kranty: control reproduction through the water supply.

7. Who controls the controllers? —The unasked question.

a) The basic question begged: the psycho-civilizer as King?

b) If people are machines, why should biological continuation have value?

V. Need to Reaffirm That  Which Was the Original Base for Modern Science

Questions

1. Explain the important contributions to science made by biblical principles.

2. How should our knowledge of the biblical view of work and nature affect our own attitudes to research, study of the Bible, and the use of our minds?

3. Does this segment help you to understand how and why men of great intellectual refinement in Nazi Germany could accept what was going on?

4. “Without the absolute line which Christianity gives of the total uniqueness of Man, people have no boundary line between what they can do and what they should do.” Discuss.

Key Events and Persons

Copernicus: 1475-1543

Francis Bacon: 1561-1626

Novum Organum Scientiarum: 1620

Galileo: 1564-1642

Pascal: 1623-1662

Isaac Newton: 1642-1727

Principia Mathematica: 1687

Michael Faraday: 1791-1867

Charles Darwin: 1809-1882

Origin of Species: 1859

Herbert Spencer: 1820-1903

Albert Einstein: 1879-1955

Russel Lee: 1895-

Heinrich Himmler: 1900-1945

B.F. Skinner: 1904-1990

Arthur Koestler: 1905-

Kenneth B. Clark: 1914-

Murray Eden: 1920-

Kermit Kranty: 1923-

Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity: 1971

Further Study

Robin Briggs, ed., The Scientific Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (1969).

E.A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (1932).

Arthur Koestler, The Watershed. A Biography of Johannes Kepler (1960).

Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (1967).

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (1945).

C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1972).

D.M. Mackay, The Clockwork Image (1974).

Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution. Wistar Symposium

Monograph, no. 5 (1967).

B.F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).

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Taking up for Francis Schaeffer’s book Christian Manifesto

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How Should We Then Live 1-1 Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why it fell. It fell because of inward [..

September 8, 2011 – 2:56 pm Categories: Francis Schaeffer | Post a comment

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A response to 9/11 by Adrian Rogers jh54

 

Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970’s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a hero to a 7th grader at the same school named Burt Reynolds.)

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Adrian Rogers – [1/2] How to Come Back When You’re Down

Adrian Rogers – [2/2] How to Come Back When You’re Down

Here are 5 thoughts by Adrian Rogers:

Many have asked how should Christians respond to what happened in America on September 11. And after much prayer and reading through God’s Word, I’d like to share you five things God has placed on my heart as to our response to current affairs of our nation and the war on terrorism.

The first thing I want to tell you is to trust God. He will see us through this. His anchor hold in the storm. Proverbs 18:10 says, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.” Psalm 20:7 says, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.” America may go to war with manmade weapons, but our safety and ultimate victory comes from the Lord.

Second, we need to gather and pray. Gather your family and pray. Go to your neighbors and pray. We need pray for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. God’s word says, “I exhort therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, then giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty, for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.” (1 Timothy 2:1). We need to pray for and we need to work for peace.

Third, all the prayer in the world is not going to do any good unless we repent. Second Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” We, as a nation, must repent. We, as Christians, who have stood back in apathy and allowed our nation to slide into a cesspool of immorality, need to repent for our sins, as well.

Fourth, we need to reach out in love. Let the terrible wickedness committed on September 11 be the dark velvet upon which the diamond of God’s love can be seen in your life. This is an opportunity for you to share the love of Jesus with everybody – whatever their race, whatever their nationality, whatever their religion.

This is a time for a mighty baptism of God’s love. Romans 12:21 says, “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” There is no person on the face of this earth that you have the luxury of hating and no person that you can rejoice when he falls into misery.

Finally, we need to speak up. As the night grows darker, the saints need to grow brighter. The attacks on September 11 were based on a philosophy and we can’t shoot down a philosophy with a bullet. The only thing that will overcome an idea is a better idea. And that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I challenge you to move out of your comfort zone and into your neighborhoods to share the love of Jesus. Oh, that we would live the truth, tell the truth, speak the truth, believe the truth, love the truth.

We need, with all of our heart and soul, to preach the glorious Gospel of Jesus to a lost and dying world. If all we’re doing is enjoying our pursuit of happiness, we’re just making America a better place to go to hell from. Each of us needs to go to our family, neighbors, friends, coworkers, and business associates – and get them lashed to the cross.

We need to help them understand that there’s a God in glory who rules over all and come what may, “neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

If you need resources to help you share God’s plan of salvation, Love Worth Finding can help, just give us a call at 1-800-LOVE-GOD or visit our web site at www.lwf.org. We’re praying for God to use you in a mighty way for His glory!

September 8, 2011 – 2:24 pm Categories: Adrian Rogers | Comments (1)

Dave Hope and Kerry Livgren of Kansas: Their story of deliverance from drugs

The recent events in Little Rock concerning KARK TV’s top weatherman Brett Cummins and his experience of drinking alcohol and snorting coke has left a lot of people asking questions. Since the evening ended in the tragic death of one of Brett’s friends, Dexter Williams, many questions have centered on the use of illegal drugs. Some has wondered why KARK in their press release failed to even mention Cummins’ drug use.

I am hoping that those that I know who are involved in drugs will think long and hard also about the recent addition to the “27 Club” of Amy Whinehouse.

Dave Hope and Kerry Livgren went on a journey in their life together. They both were founding members of the rock group Kansas. Dave Hope actually got heavily involved in the drug scene as his rock band made it to the top. His story of deliverance through Christ is in the two video clips later in this post. First I want to take a look at the story of Kerry Livgren. Step by step in this 8 minute video clip he tells about his journey and how he found the answer he was searching for by putting his faith alone in Christ. I want to challenge those who have chosen to escape through drugs to watch this video and I wound love to have your feedback.

Kerry Livgren testimony

Uploaded by on Nov 1, 2009

Kerry Livgren( music group Kansas) testimony and promotion of film The Imposter starring Kevin Max(DC Talk) and Jeff Deyo.

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At this point I am posting a portion of a previous post I did earlier this year. It deals with the search for satisfaction that Woody Allen, Coldplay, Kansas and King Solomon all went on. It includes the video clips of Dave Hope and Kerry Livgren of Kansas.

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Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago:

Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas

What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on these weighty matters.

Let me start off by pointing out what they all had in common. First, they were very successful and rose to the top of their fields. Second, they were very famous and of course, thirdly they were wealthy and experienced the privileges that fame and wealth brought. Finally, they were still seeking answers to life’s great questions even though it seemed they had experienced all the world had to offer.

Unlike many the past grammy winners of “Best Rock Album,” Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends by Coldplay is filled with songs that deal with spiritual themes such as death, the meaning of life and searching for an afterlife.

Leadsinger Chris Martin notes, “…because we’ve had some people close to us we’ve lost, but some miracles — we’ve got kids. So, life has been very extreme recently, and so both death and life pop up quite often” (MTV News interview, June 9, 2008).

Russ Briermeier of Christianity Today observes that this album is “often provocative, spiritual, and seemingly on the verge of identifying a greater truth, asking and inspiring many questions without providing the answers.” It reminded me of King Solomon’s search for answers in the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. Solomon also dealt the subject of death a lot. Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 asserts, “It is better to spend your time at funerals than at festivals. For you are going to die, and you should think about it while there is still time. Sorrow is better than laughter, it may sadden your face, but it sharpens your understanding.”

The subject of death is prominent in the songs “Poppyfields,” “Violet Hill,” “Death and All His Friends,” “42,” and the “Cemeteries of London.” Then the song “The Escapist” states, “And in the end, We lie awake and we dream, we’re makin our escape.” In the end we all die. Therefore, I assume this song is searching for an afterlife to escape to. The song “Glass of Water” sheds some more light on where we possibly escape to: “Oh he said you could see a future inside a glass of water, with riddles and the rhymes, He asked ‘Will I see heaven in mine?’

Coldplay is clearly searching for spiritual answers but it seems they have not found them quite yet. The song “42“: “Time is so short and I’m sure, There must be something more.” Then the song “Lost“: “Every river that I tried to cross, Every door I ever tried was locked, I’m just waiting til the shine wears off, You might be a big fish in a little pond, Doesn’t mean you’ve won, Because along may come a bigger one and you will be lost.”
Solomon went to the extreme in his searching in the Book of Ecclesiastes for this “something more” that Coldplay is talking about, but he did not find any satisfaction in pleasure (2:1), education (2:3), work (2:4), wealth (2:8) or fame (2:9). All of his accomplishments would not be remembered (1:11) and who is to say that they had not already been done before by others (1:10)? This reminds me of the big fish in the little pond that Coldplay was talking about. Even if you think you are on top, are you really? Also Solomon’s upcoming death depressed him because both people and animals alike “go to the same place — they came from dust and they return to dust” (3:20).

In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me thatKerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, like Solomon and Coldplay, they realized death comes to everyone and “there must be something more.”

Livgren wrote:

“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”

Both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same  interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.

The movie maker Woody Allen has embraced the nihilistic message of the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. David Segal in his article, “Things are Looking Up for the Director Woody Allen. No?” (Washington Post, July 26, 2006), wrote, “Allen is evangelically passionate about a few subjects. None more so than the chilling emptiness of life…The 70-year-old writer and director has been musing about life, sex, work, death and his generally futile search for hope…the world according to Woody is so bereft of meaning, so godless and absurd, that the only proper response is to curl up on a sofa and howl for your mommy.”

The song “Dust in the Wind” recommends, “Don’t hang on.” Allen himself says, “It’s just an awful thing and in that context you’ve got to find an answer to the question: ‘Why go on?’ ”  It is ironic that Chris Martin the leader of Coldplay regards Woody Allen as his favorite director.

Lets sum up the final conclusions of these gentlemen:  Coldplay is still searching for that “something more.” Woody Allen has concluded the search is futile. Livgren and Hope of Kansas have become Christians and are involved in fulltime ministry. Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”

You can hear Kerry Livgren’s story from this youtube link:

(part 1 ten minutes)

(part 2 ten minutes)

Kansas – Dust In The Wind

Ecclesiastes 1

Published on Sep 4, 2012

Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider

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Ecclesiastes 2-3

Published on Sep 19, 2012

Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider

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September 8, 2011 – 7:52 am Categories: Current Events | Comments (2)

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