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On a personal note, I have officially finished my penultimate semester of undergraduate work at Florida State. The semester ended up going pretty smoothly and I didn’t have any difficult finals. I got a lot done over the semester, including taking my GREs and doing all of my graduate school applications (see pic below). I ended up applying to twelve different schools, and as of right now all I can do is wait and hope and pray. We’ll see what happens. I should start hearing back from schools by the end of February at the latest. For now, I have three weeks with no classes and I’m hoping to take advantage of the free time by getting some reading done.

My local paper, the Lakeland Ledger, carried an editorial by Richard P. Sloan of the Los Angeles Times in a recent issue. The teaser quote from the article in bold print was this:

Some prominent physicians are calling for the wall beween religion and medicine to be torn down.

I had had heard of the supposed wall of separation between church and state. But this was a new one to me. As a emergency physician who has been practicing for years I found it hard to believe I had missed this important lecture in medical school at Penn State. I can’t believe I must have been sleeping during those sessions in residency where I learned to practice medicine. I have taken the Hippocratic oath, but for the life of me I can’t remember coming across that wall that has separated religion and medicine for all these years. Could it be there is no wall? I’m wondering exactly where Mr. Sloan discovered this wall and who put it up in the first place.

This seems like one more attempt to marginalize the Christian faith and keep its influence out of our secular society at any cost. Sloan decries the emphasis which some physicians are placing on understanding the place of religion and spirituality in their patients. He offers many non-sequiturs to argue that any reference to religion and spirituality should be kept out of the physician-patient relationship. After listing the irreparable damages which will be inflicted upon the patients, he states that his most important reason to exclude religion is to protect it from science. He presupposes that science will steamroll religion if they are brought together.

The sick are not mere machines which are brought to the garage for an oil change. If that is all a human being is, then perhaps Mr. Sloan has a point. If a person is a complex interaction of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual parts, then a physician may not help his patient unless he addresses the spiritual. So, I don’t know where this wall came from, nor who built it. I’ve never seen it nor been taught about it. But if it’s there, let’s do tear it down.

Herbert Schlossberg had much to say about money in his book, Idols for Destruction. I suppose this is because money and material goods so easily figure into and are manipulated by our idolatrous propensities. One can turn on the religious channels on television at almost any time, day or night, and hear a preacher exclaiming how God wants his people to be rich and prosper. On the other hand, one often hears how the rich are evil and true righteousness is only to be found in poverty. Well, which is it? Is the Christian to seek wealth or poverty?

Schlossberg has the answer:

Thus poverty and wealth are morally neutral: neither one is an evil to be ashamed of nor a sign of special worth or transcending glory. Both ideas are illusions shared by most of the idolatries.

Wealth, or the lack thereof, has no direct bearing on moral worth. Despite the cries from modern pulpits that being rich is a sign of God’s blessing, wealth cannot be used as a signpost for spiritual success. On the other hand there is nothing “spiritual” or “moral” about being in poverty. Schlossberg again states:

The old delusion that poverty is a sign of immoral living and wealth of moral worth is being replaced by one that says the opposite. God is said to be on the side of the poor, whereas in another age he was said to be on the side of the rich; that was how they got rich. Both conceptions are grotesque caricatures of biblical teaching.

Another in a an occasional series of quotes taken from The Quotable Lewis, edited by Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root:

I do not think there is a demonstrative proof (like Euclid) of Christianity, nor of the eixstence of matter, nor of the good will and honesty of my best and oldest friends. I think all three are (except perhaps the second) far more probable than the alternatives. The case for Christianity in general is well given by Chesterton; and I tried to do something in my Broadcast Talks. As to why God doesn’t make it demonstratively clear: are we sure that He is even interested in the kind of Theism which would be a compelled logical assent to a conclusive argument? Are we interested in it in personal matters? I demand from my friend a trust in my good faith which is certain without demonstrative proof. It wouldn’t be confidence at all if he waited for rigorous proof. Hang it all, the very fairy-tales embody the truth. Othello believed in Desdemona’s innocence when it was proved: but that was too late. Lear believed in Cordelia’s love when it was proved: but that was too late. “His praise is lost who stays till all commend.” The magnanimity, the generosity which will trust on a reasonable probability, is required of us. But supposing one believed and was wrong after all? Why, then you would have paid the universe a compliment it doesn’t deserve. Your error would even so be more interesting and important than the reality. And yet how could that be? How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?

- C. S. Lewis, A Severe Mercy, letter to Sheldon Vanauken (23 December 1950), p. 92

Sorry to add another, but I can never tire of Calvin and Hobbes. (Click to see full size).

Today’s Calvin and Hobbes Strip from E-comics:

Uncommon Descent has an interesting post on the supposed “wall of separation” between church and state. It points out that there are 45 holes in the “wall”.

Mark Roberts has an excellent series on the movie presently running in theaters called The Nativity Story. I’m planning on seeing it soon. Roberts discusses the historical accuracy of the movie.

Greg Koukl and Francis Beckwith have written a wonderfully understandable book called, Relativism - Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air. Page 74 contains a dialogue loosely based on a real-life encounter between a high school teacher and her student. This dialogue, provided to illustrate the inroads of relativism into education, I reproduce it in its entirety:

Teacher: Welcome, students. This is the first day of class, and so I want to lay down some ground rules. First, since no one has the truth, you should be open-minded to the opinions of your fellow students. Second… Elizabeth, do you have a question?

Elizabeth: Yes, I do. If nobody has the truth, isn’t that a good reason for me not to listen to my fellow students? After all, if nobody has the truth, why should I waste my time listening to other people and their opinions? What’s the point? Only is somebody has the truth does it make sense to be open-minded. Don’t you agree?

Teacher: No, I don’t. Are you claiming to know the truth? Isn’t that a bit arrogant and dogmatic?

Elizabeth: Not at all. Rather, I think it’s dogmatic, as well as arrogant, to assert that no single person on earth knows the truth. After all, have you met every person in the world and quizzed them exhaustively? If not, how can you make such a claim? Also, I believe it is actually the opposite of arrogance to say that I will alter my opinions to fit the truth whenever and wherever I find it. And if I happen to think that I have good reason to believe I do know the truth and would like to share it with you, why wouldn’t you listen to me? Why would you automatically discredit my opinion before it is even uttered? I thought we were suppposed to listen to everyone’s opinion.

Teacher: This should prove to be an interesting semester.

Another Student: (blurts out) Ain’t that the truth. (the students laugh)

Robert H. Bork wrote the preface to Schlossberg’s book, Idols for Destruction. In it he comments on an objection he had made earlier in his life to a friend who argued that:

Religion constitutes the only reliable basis for morality and that when religion loses its hold on society, standards of morality will gradually crumble.

Bork objected that there were many moral people who are not religious in the least. I have often heard this same objection to the claim that the only true basis for morality is based in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I can count many acquaintances and friends who are non-Christian who live lives most would see as moral. Does this mean there are alternative sources in which to ground morality? Not necessarily. Bork’s friend replied that “moral” people are simply living on the moral capital left by generations that believe there is a God who makes demands on us. The prediction is that as we move further and further from previous generations whose source of morality was the Judeo-Christian God, that remaining moral capital will dwindle and society will become less moral. I think that one finds evidence that this is the case all around us. Schlossberg makes the same point when he states:

After biblical faith wanes, a people can maintain habits of thought and of self-restraint. The ethic remains after the faith that bore it departs. But eventually a generation arises that no longer has the habit, and that is when the behavior changes radically.