Do Republicans Have a Future? Pt 2

Last night, I started a meditation on the future of the party to which I have belonged my entire life, the Republican party.

I want to unpack something. I mentioned "traditional values." That's a slippery term; it means different things to different people. So here's what I mean by "traditional values."

"Traditional values" = values based on the commonly accepted reading of the Bible, based on the existence of a transcendent God who has communicated himself to us in a unique way through the Christian canon. I realize that people disagree over how to read the Bible, and that the meanings of many biblical passages are in dispute. That does not render Bible-based values impossible, however.

In terms of policy, this means:

• respect for life; life has intrinsic value, whether it's the life of the unborn or disabled, etc. Because we are the special creations of a loving God, we are more than biological entities. Life is therefore valuable, and worth protecting, even when inconvenient or difficult.
• respect for institutions beyond government; the church and the family, for example. In Europe, and in Obamity's America, government claims the right to dictate how children should be raised, how churches should conduct their affairs, etc. Church / family and government are in a turf war. Why shouldn't the government endorse homosexual marriage? If you don't believe in transcendent values, and that marriage is more than whatever the enlightened who govern us determine it should be, then you have no adequate answer to that question.
  

All this being said, I am always uneasy when politicians talk about "traditional values," "family values, etc. Some politicians who endorse conservative positions in regard to these issues are attempting to act on conviction. For every one of those, there are a dozen for whom "gay marriage ban" or whatnot are simply red meat they throw out to manipulate their followers.

Do Republicans Have a Future?

Since the Obama victory in November, I have been thinking and reading and wondering about the future of the Republican party. I'm a conservative Republican, with the accent on conservative.

Modern conservatism (small government, low taxes, traditional values: a modified brand of libertarianism) has had its home in the Republican party since the days of Reagan. Since the 1980 election, if you agreed with Wm F Buckley, if you read National Review, you were almost certainly a Republican.

Throughout that time, conservatives have known who and what we were. We knew what we believed about a variety of issues, and why.

What happened? Several things, I think.

1. Winner's complacency; Reagan's popularity (which carried over to GH Bush for most of his presidency) and the way the 1994 elections reversed Clinton's victory convinced us that history was headed in our direction. Can you believe that four years ago, Karl Rove was "laying the groundwork for a permanent Republican majority"? Gee, how did THAT turn out?
   
2. We allowed our opponents and their friends in the media to define the way the public perceived us. If the media keeps referring to you as a bigot, sooner or later those who are in the middle are going to believe that characterization.
3. We squabbled over turf instead of standing up for what was right. Never mind how effective he was: Newt Gingrich was unpopular with his comrades in congress because he's arrogant. When David Bonior attacked Newt for having a book advance--notice how no one has attacked the Clintons or the Obamas for making money off books?--Republicans sat on their hands. Other Republicans in congress wanted his power, or to take him down a notch, so they tacitly participated in the press savaging of Gingrich.

More later, I'm tired.

Now that BSG is no more

Now that BSG has finished its run, what are the most satisfying dramas on TV?

• I watch Lost and 24 regularly; I've also gotten caught up in Friday Night Lights, because it reminds me of Sweet Mother Texas.
• The Unit is a very good show. Dennis Haysbert is a fabulous actor; he has the presence of a John Wayne. (I kind of wish David Palmer had been elected president last November; I'd be more confident in our ability to stand against Iran, etc.)
• I was a huge fan of Life on Mars, both the US and the BBC versions. (Even though the US version pulled a Bobby-Ewing-in-the-shower "it was only a dream" ending out of thin air.)
• Ashes to Ashes is currently on BBC on Saturday nights, it's the follow up to Life on Mars, and is very good. Love the Gene Hunt character. (Speaking of Brit imports, don't miss MI-5 on BBC or PBS or wherever you can find it.)
  
• South Central and The Unusuals both had very promising beginnings.

My hope is that South Central will fill the gap left by The Shield, The Sopranos, etc. Gritty cop-drama morality plays are my favorite kind of TV.

Ultimately, I watch too much TV.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Sunday night in the Theophilus household; the TV is on, and the dulcet tones of Al Micheals and John Madden can be heard throughout the house, describing the Colts vs. Redskins in the Hall of Fame Game.

Football season is here. It doesn't get any better than this.

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Alright. I'm having problems with my left knee. I have arthritis under the kneecap, and the muscles that control the position of the kneecap are not holding it in place, which allows it to float, which irritates the tissue under the kneecap, with makes it swell and hurt. PAINFUL.

I'm starting physical therapy tomorrow. I got a cortisone shot the other day, and the needle was at LEAST two inches long.

My doctor prescribed this new pain medication, Mobic; he said it was like Naproxen Sodium, but without the stomach problems. What he didn't say was that it doesn't work. AT ALL. I took Mobic for three days, it didn't do a thing for the pain in my knee. So I'm back on Tylenol and Aleve and Ibuprofen.

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My kids start school this Thursday, except for my oldest daughter. She moves into the dorm at Kentucky Christian University NEXT Friday, the 15th. Out of my house, into the dorm.

My little girl is going away. It makes me sad and proud and happy and scared, all at once.

God Bless Beneficial Finance!!!

That's all I've got to say about THAT!

Mellow Haze

It's the end of Junior High Challenge, a summer camp for kids entering 6th - 8th grades, here on the campus at KCU. I've been sponsoring this week, because a. my son wanted to attend, and b. our church didn't have any sponsors attending the week.

So here I am.

We're staying in the dorms, and I'm not sleeping very well. I'm not going to bed until 1 or so; normally, I go to sleep around 11.30. And the beds are short and hard; I'm 6'7", and don't care for short hard beds.

So I'm sleep deprived.

Add to that the fact that I spent my entire summer, from 15 May to Tuesday of last week (8 July?) feverishly working on my book. I haven't really taken any time off this summer, and I.need.time.off.

Money? Yeah, always worried, always stressful. More month than money, you know?

Daughter going off to college--actually, she's coming here to KCU, but we're still getting her ready to leave home. I'm worried about her.

I'm not ready for my classes.

I have maintenance and repair things I need to do on my house, but I'm worried about all the professor and Dean things I need to do.

We're trying to refinance our house, and it looks like it may have to go on hold until September--not what we wanted.

We haven't taken a vacation at all this year.

And I'm just tired. Tired. Tired. Tired.

I'm going to Findlay, OH this Sunday, to participate in Kris Langstaff's ordination service. Beth and the two youngest kids are going with me; we're going a day early, and we'll probably go to the beach or something. That's all the vacation we'll get this summer.

I'm spending my days (daze) in a mellow haze of exhaustion, with a couple of pinches of anxiety thrown in.

@#$% Beneficial Finance

We've been trying to refinance our house. We currently have our mortgage through Beneficial Finance, and our interest rate is fairly high.

(Why is our interest rate high? Well, in 2001 we bought a house in Cartersville, Georgia. I was pastoring a church there. The church split, and I got fired. We moved back to Texas, to Waco, and I finished my Ph.D.

But we still owned the house. So we rented it for a couple of years. Everything was fine, until the renters moved out without telling us. Actually, they told the property management company, but the managers just didn't tell ME--but that's another post.

So we were left trying to make two house payments, and were not able to keep that particular arrangement up. So our credit rating was damaged, and it's taken us four years to rebuild it. Anyway: that's why our interest rate was bad, and why we qualify for a much better rate today.)

So we've been trying to refinance. We've gone through all the dance steps, etc., and everything is set up for our refi. EXCEPT--and I just found this out today--we have a prepayment penalty of $7,500 if we refinance before September.

SEPTEMBER.

Which completely screws everything up, I think.

Dang Beneficial. When we signed the papers on this mortgage, they told us, "You can refinance it in a year, and bring the interest rate down." That's what they said.

But what they meant was, "You can refinance this in a year or two as long as you refinance it with us, and no body else."

The Commentary Is Done

Last week, I finished the manuscript for my commentary on Philemon and the Pastoral Epistles, and mailed that sucker off to Smyth & Helwys. The title of the book will be Reading Paul's Letters to Individuals: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Letters to Philemon, Titus, and Timothy.

This commentary has an interesting history. Three senior Southern Baptist NT scholars were supposed to write the commentary. The first two had to withdraw from the project, for a variety of reasons. The third, Hulitt Gloer, wrote a manuscript but was unable to finish it due to health problems. So in January, Charles H. Talbert (the editor of the series and my doctorfather at Baylor University) asked me if I could complete the project. So I did.

This commentary is a scholarly commentary, based on my own research and investigation of primary source literature and cutting edge secondary literature (e.g., Bruce Winter on the new Roman woman; Craig Evans on imperial propaganda; my own work on succession; K. Waters on virtues; etc.)

A few things are unique about the commentary.

1. First, it's aimed at preachers and undergraduate students. It's scholarly, but not too scholarly for any educated person to read and benefit from it.
   
2. It's primary strategy is to read Paul's words and thoughts against what we know about first century thought and philosophy, particularly Jewish thought and philosophy (Philo, Josephus).
3. The section on the Pastoral Epistles (Titus, 1&2 Timothy) is the first to be written with a historical understanding of succession, and how that phenomenon would have shaped the ancient readers' understanding of what's going on between Paul and Timothy / Titus.
4. I wrote the commentary with Logos's Libronix Digital Library system up on my computer. That means I had the Greek text and Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich at my fingertips. I also made extensive use of Perseus for word searches. (Now if they'd just make Perseus available for Windoze machines!)

They're telling me that the commentary should be available for sale before SBL in November; that would be great. But honestly, right now I'm just glad to be finished with the thing--at least until the proofs come in the mail somewhere around 1 August.