31 Thanksgivings

I've spent 31 Thanksgivings with my wife. We celebrated one together the year before we were married, and the next 30 as husband and wife. It is the first we've ever spent just the two of us, without any family. Our first year of marriage we celebrated Thanksgiving in Canada with a bunch of expatriates studying at Canadian Theological College in Regina, Saskatchewan, so I suppose that one also could count as one we spent without family, but we were certainly not alone.

We actually were invited to neighbors' yesterday, and spent the day with them, but I found it so unsatisfying not eating my wife's cooking that we decided to redo it, today.

Though we desperately miss our two sons -- this was our first Thanksgiving without them since they were born -- we managed to enjoy each other and be profoundly grateful. We prayed, ate, then read John Piper's, Don't Waste Your Life, out loud to each other. It's a good celebration.

I am very thankful to God. I am grateful for my wife. She is truly the Proverbs 31 woman. I am grateful for my two boys. I learned a lot about God's love when I first tried to comfort a collicky first son and was overwhelmed by a sense of love for him that has only grown over the years. I am grateful for my second son whose joy-filled faith seems to have grown since leaving home.

Hidden Learning a Good Thing

I'm rereading Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. I read it once before from beginning to end and have reread many of its chapters on occasion as needed. I have the same reaction to this book that I have to D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's sermons; both men hide their learning. They use very simple language to express profound thoughts informed by extensive reading and research. This is an example to emulate.

Age and Study

This past weekend I submitted an application for the M. Div. program at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary beginning, D.V., January 18th.

It would seem an odd thing for a 51-year old to do. It's fairly common for 50ish types to change careers, but it's not too common for them to choose second careers that require at least 3 years of schooling before they can get started. By the time I finish I will be close to 55.

Age is irrelevant, though, if you don't think about retiring. If your criterion for evaluating options turns from what I can do to be most comfortable in retirement to what I can do to be most of service for the remainder of my life, however long that might be, then a seminary education looks appealing. If we are called to love God with all our strength, and education adds to our strength, then the 3 years are worth it.

Rights from Wrongs

I spent the day, yesterday, preparing myself to read Alan Dershowitz's new book, Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights. He wants to argue that human rights do not need to be transcendent, that is, they are not derived from natural law or nature's God. At the same time, he recognizes that having no external source of rights may create a problem for the concept of minority rights. If rights are simply an expression of societal will, then rights are conveyed always, and only, by the will of the majority.

Dershowitz proposes an experiential theory of rights. It seems to be very much like Justice Potter Stewart's approach to obscenity laws, "I can't define it [obscenity], but I know it when I see it." We cannot define rights a priori, but we recognize their violation when we see it. Human rights evolve through some sort of trial and error approach. Rights are not transcendent, but are a response to recognition of wrongs.

Again, I haven't yet read the book, so it is probably premature for me to even be writing this much, but I am eager to see how he handles this. I am eager to see who, in his scheme, is responsible for identifying these wrongs and rectifying them. If it is the popular will, then we're back to a majoritarianism that excludes minority rights. I suspect he will argue that it is the responsibility of judges, or an enlightened few, and we are left with the kind of thinking that gave us Lawrence v. Texas where cloistered judges respond to the latest thinking of the lawyers' guild, among whom Dershowitz and other Harvard and Yale law professors, his peers, take a lead.

How did I get myself ready to read this book? Very simply. I read the Declaration of Independence. "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people ... to assume the ... equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them" and "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The ignorance displayed by the media in ridiculing Bush's assertion that freedom is God's gift to man, an ignorance of our own Declaration of Independence, only reveals that they have already bought into Dershowitz's arguments, probably without even being aware of it.

As I get older, I become more convinced that God must be presupposed if knowledge, morality, and human rights have any validity. If we begin with ourselves, we end up with solepcism.

Thomas Sowell on Specter

Thomas Sowell has an interesting series on Arlen Specter beginning with this piece:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20041109.shtml

He reminds us of the Bork hearings -- the lies and smears perpetrated against an eminently qualified, honorable man. If the Democrats want to find the real source of division in this country they ought to review their behavior in those hearings. Those hearings made me a Republican.